


Truth Among The Stars

by BoydTheReaver, Leliel12



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy, Persona 4, Persona Series
Genre: (because im too lazy to buy his dlc lul), Action/Adventure, Alternate Protagonist Names, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Mass Effect Fusion, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst and Humor, Canon Character of Color, Colonist (Mass Effect), Elcor-Centric, F/F, F/M, Fish out of Water, God this is so self-indulgent, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, Male Character of Color, Man Out of Time, Minoru Sakamoto, No Javik, No Smut, Paragon Shepard (Mass Effect), Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Shepard is Black, Space Opera, Tyrone Shepard, Urban Fantasy, War Hero (Mass Effect), Worldbuilding, but aren't all fanfics like that?, lore expansion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2019-09-02 11:24:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16786024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoydTheReaver/pseuds/BoydTheReaver, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leliel12/pseuds/Leliel12
Summary: Given the fact that he and his friends are psychic teenagers who can summon manifestations of the soul,andthe fact that the year of 2011 was spent solving an unsolvable murder mystery while simultaneously scoring a seriously cute girlfriend, Minoru Sakamoto and the Investigation Team's lives have been nothing short of bizarre. He genuinely, truly thought that with all the supernatural madness becoming such a daily staple of his life, it couldn't possibly get weirder.So yeah, ofcoursehe was wrong. He shouldn't have agreed alongside his seven friends and his petite, musician girlfriend to partake in anexperimental cryogenic experimentthat could go wrong even for the one hour you're supposed to have been in stasis for. Even if hewaspaid with a free tuition like the rest of his friends, all he has to show for itnowis being booted 172 years into the future to be recruited into a classified military outfit that has like-minded Persona users in a galaxy-spanning empire.Seriously, this isthelimit of weirdness possible. Itcan'tget weirder than this, right?...right?





	1. Out of Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome one and welcome all, to what is possibly our most anticipated crossover project of 2018!
> 
> We've been planning this for - quite literally - a year and a half. Now I'm letting Leliel do the writing while I do the drafting and revisions, so me speaking all of this starting jargon is just my own edits to this piece of work. This is definitely one of the weirder crossovers we've come up with in hindsight, and I hope that this kicks off as much as it will!
> 
> I'm a huge Persona and Fire Emblem fan, obviously. But I'm also a huge Mass Effect fan too. Persona is to me what H.P. Lovecraft is to Urban Fantasy, while Fire Emblem is to me what Lord of the Rings is to fantasy. And let me say this: Mass Effect is to me what Star Wars is to sci-fi. The Mass Effect universe holds an extremely close place in my heart because it's quite literally my first M-Rated game aside from Team Fortress 2 and Persona 4 Golden, when I was a wee minor of 13 years. The world never failed to wow me over with its incredible world-building, great writing and solid third-person shooting. It's definitely no exaggeration to say that the Mass Effect Trilogy isn't just a hallmark in sci-fi (at least in my opinion), but easily one of the best things to come out of the Seventh Generation of Gaming. The trilogy was - for all purposes and intents - a masterpiece. Even if the series is currently on ice thanks to Andromeda's terribleness, I still hope the day comes we get to revisit this universe again... preferably with EA going bankrupt and the IP being sold to a company that'll treat it halfway decently, like Obsidan and CD Projekt Red (I would've actually added Bethesda on the list a few days ago, but 76's dumpster fire added them on my shit-list permanently).
> 
> So... yeah. This is gonna be a monster of a fic. We're effectively giving the _entire Mass Effect universe_ a Low Urban Fantasy spin with the existence of the aria of the soul! And given how long me and Leliel have been planning this, let me tell you: I am _beyond_ excited.
> 
> So yeah, let's do this! A few things that are worth clarifying about this take on the universe:
> 
> \- I'm basing my own experiences off of Shepard's appearance: his name is Tyrone Shepard, and he's a Paragon Colonist/War Hero whose love interest is Jack. If you want to know what he looks like, click here (https://i.imgur.com/pFQelu8.png, Casual Outfit) and here (https://i.imgur.com/SCh7064.png, Armor).  
> \- As per tradition in my fanfics, I give other canonically-named characters their own original spin. Yu Narukami is named Minoru Sakamoto now, and his love interest is Ayane Matsunaga.  
> \- Speaking of which, Ayane appears in this fanfic too as a party member! Without spoiling too much though, no, she won't get a Persona.  
> \- As the tags imply, Javik... isn't really a thing, either. This is a side-effect of me now owning the DLC for that experience, so the story goes on as if he wasn't there.  
> \- I also won't spoil too much about this either, but the elcor - as a species - are gonna play a _huge_ role in this fanfic. They're quite literally my favorite alien race in all of fiction, and without spoiling too much, there will be a _lot_ of screentime with them.
> 
> Well, that's everything that's come to mind. I'll leave the footnote to Leliel; he can certainly relay a few things for me. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy the fanfic!
> 
> ~Boyd the Reaver

_" **Time** ,_  
_Old dry winds go by,_  
_Lone air comes quietly,_  
_**Time** ,_  
_Old dry winds go by,_  
_Uncertain space you need to fill in,_

_Every **time** goodbye to **yesterday** ,_  
_Greeted by **today** ,_  
_Smiling to **tomorrow** ,_  
_No one really belongs,_  
_Each **time** we hope to stay around,_  
_I know how you feel,_  
_Beyond your walls."_

_— Lyrics of " **Time** ", Persona 3 Portable_

* * *

_...cold._

_I feel cold. So cold._

_Why was it so cold?_

_It was cold and dark, and... silent._

_I'm not feeling any fear. Hell, I'm not even sure if I remember anything else._

_But how did I know I was cold then?_

"...subject... reaction okay... quick response..."

_Huh. Voices. Those were voices._

_But... why were they so muffled? Why were they so_ distant?

_Wait. Wait a minute. I'm hearing more of the conversation._

"...can't believe it. Is he really the fourth one to revive already? But the cryo-pod he was in was too primitive..."

"It seems that way, Nurse Darlami... I didn't think it was reasonable to assume Information Era Earth was capable of that level of technology."

_Wait, what? Cryo-pods? Information Era Earth? What were they talking about?_

_Was I from that time period? Was I in that cryo-pod? Nothing makes sense._

"Ah, he seems to be stirring awake. Let me see if I can't talk with him."

"By all means, Doctor."

_Wait. I think I remember. Were they talking about..._

_...wait, who? It's so hard to remember..._

**"...Sakamoto?"**

_Okay, that was loud. Wait, I felt my head move._

**"Excellent, you're responding. Can you move your hand? Just one?"**

_I felt an odd sensation. My hand, I guess. But is my name Sakamoto?_

**"Ah. Excellent. Do not worry; you've been out for a very long time. But you're thawing just fine. Just hold on a minute, your body is still assimilating the bio-ge - err, I mean temporary blood. You should be capable of vision within an hour."**

_An hour? But..._

_How long was I out?_

_How long was I taking?_

_My eyes don't work, but-_

_But..._

_Oh, God._

_My head..._

_I felt my eyelids twitch and..._

_...it's bright now._

_It's really bright._

The first thing "Sakamoto" noticed was a clinical room while he was almost completely (more like halfway, but still) submerged in a tub of... gel? Wait, this wasn't a blood transfusion. What was going on? He couldn't speak, he couldn't talk, he couldn't move... he was completely limp. But he saw an Asian man - a doctor? - come up to him and smile.

"You're awake." The man had no ill intent; he simply smiled warmly. "Welcome back, Minoru Sakamoto."

_That... that's my name? 'Minoru Sakamoto'? Who am I? Why was I in this pod for so long? Is there anything in particular that I'm -_

_...oh my God. My head hurts, it's -_

And just like that, the memories flooded back.

His name was Minoru Sakamoto. There was nary a doubt about that much. He was 17 years old, leader of the Investigation Team, possessor of the Wild Card and boyfriend of Ayane Matsunaga. And he had his first coherent thought as the white and blue blur resolved into shapes: 

_This isn't Mitsuru's lab._

_...hang on. Why was I expecting that?_

* * *

Minoru honestly had no clue what was going on aside from what he remembered - which was currently very fuzzy and disjointed. He lost track of the time, but despite it feeling only like minutes, he notices the man was gone and the blue sky outside was now an orange hue. He could at least move his right arm now, at least. His left arm was still numb though. So he did just that, one of his appendages slowly coming out of the increasingly fluid gel he had been previously lying in, rubbing his eyes. _We were... we were..._

_Oh yeah._

_That was the Boreas Project._

_Now, if only I remembered why I agreed to it... ow._

On the plus side, he actually came back. That was something. Cryonics up until now had been a very expensive way of turning yourself into a future museum exhibit, in Mitsuru Kijiro's own words. Now, it was merely a way to suffer the ultimate bad morning.

"Hey, Partner. Welcome back to the land of the - ouch! Dammit, if this day goes by without me getting frostbite, it'll be a miracle."

His eyes were still adjusting to the wide variety of sensations around him. But he wasn't completely blind. He turned his head to the best capacity he could without straining it, only to see a brunette in a school uniform. He was also half-submerged in the gel.

Subconsciously, he felt a smile overcome his face; either out of relief or something else more primal.

"Hey, Yosuke. Glad to see _you're_ in good shape." Minoru said as he looked behind him. "On the plus side, your hair's finally in order."

"Dude, it's been always like this. It just looked like the World's Worst Bedhead due to, well..." Yosuke tried to lighten the mood with a laugh, but panic quickly became visible on his face. "Oh, dear God... Partner, how long were we out? I-I don't even remember how we're even _here_ , or where we even are, or - "

Yosuke's voice, however hoarse, was raising; out of instinct, Minoru was quick to calm him. "Don't worry. Take deep breaths. Calm down." He was truthfully scared too, but... there really wasn't anything they could do about it, at least for now. "We'll have answers soon enough. For now, I need you to remain calm. I don't know where everybody else is right now, but I'm certain they're safe."

He felt partially ashamed he couldn't even recall the names of the people he _knew_ he loved like his instincts told him so, at least not on a first-hand basis. That made him feel awful; he knew enough about his own memories to know what they were like. But they were so fuzzy all the same. Why can't he remember their names _immediately?_ He knew the faces, but...

...wait. He remembered Yosuke, so he can remember the others. There were... Chie, Yukiko... Kanji? Kanji. Rise, Naoto and... Teddie? He thinks they were who worked with him in the past. And then there was also...

...Ayane. Oh God, Ayane.

_Ayane._

So much for remaining calm. He began struggling against the gel, much to Yosuke's surprise. "Dude, what are you doing?! Didn't _you_ tell _me_ to remain calm?!

_"Ayane."_ Minoru's eyes became wild with fear. "I _need_ to find Ayane. I need to make sure she's sa - "

"Don't worry, I assure you they're all safe."

In the curtain behind whatever sort of gel-pod Minoru was currently in, out came a tan-skinned Asian woman who... wait. Did she have a Polish accent? He knew not much about Eastern Europe outside of Ms. Sofue's history lessons (for some reason, the distinctive image of a pharaoh came to his mind), but she looked like she was from South Asia. So why a Slavic accent? What's going _on?_

Thankfully, the woman noticed the panic in Minoru's silver eyes a shushed him. "Please, do not panic. Everybody you love is safe; they're recovering in their own bio-gel pods. I recommend you remain submerged in it until you gain all your motor functions back."

Minoru's expression lit up before immediately distressing. Yosuke smiled cheekily. "See Partner? It's as you said; they're safe. Though not gonna lie, I'm still a bit worried too..."

He knew he shouldn't have been moved by emotion like that. But he knew how much Ayane meant to him. He couldn't recall the details yet (for now; he was still numb, after all), but whatever his relationship was with her... it was special. Very special.

"Um... thank you, Miss. Who are you?" Minoru shyly asked; he was rather hesitant dealing with somebody like this so soon. "And... dare I ask, what language are you speaking? And how do you understand me?"

"Currently, I'm speaking in Polish. The auto-translator says you're speaking in Japanese; it's how we communicate with... _everyone else."_ The woman smiled warmly, despite seeming to have back-pedaled for a second on her choice of words. "Well, I should probably give a brief introduction: I'm Alliance Nurse Maryna Darlami. I'm half-Nepalese, half-Polish. Born in Nepal, raised in Poland. I'm currently here in Tokyo as part of my job with the Tokyo Alliance Base."

_Wait,_ what? _Did she just say 'Alliance'?_

_How long were they out?_

"Um, okay..." Minoru was a bit quiet, but he asked his question despite his fear. "I can't believe I didn't ask you sooner, but... what year is it? How long were me and my friends out?"

The Asian woman blanched for a split second before gently chewing her lip. She seemed to internally debate whether it's part of her job requirement to talk about this sort of thing, but she still decided on it. She swallowed a ragged breath and nodded. "Well... I'm, um, certain you deserve to know how long it's been. And it's _been_ a long time. I planned to tell everyone once you've recovered, but given how fast you're recovering physically and mentally..."

She sat on the table, bracing herself for the worst.

"I'm afraid it's been... over a hundred years. A hundred and seventy-two years, to be specific."

_...oh._

That was the first thing coherent he could process. The rest of his thought process was better described as a thick block of incomprehension, horror, and shock.

"One... hundred... a-and... seventy...?" Even his voice sounded like the echo of a pit, not even a voice from that far off. "I-It's been... that long...? I... I...!"

"I'm... I'm so sorry. I don't know what else to say." Nurse Darlami said that with lingering guilt in her voice. "It's sudden, but... there had to have been an accident. We found you buried in a collapsed lab. We assume the only reason you survived was because you were protected in the pods."

Behind him, there was a quiet _thunk._ Yosuke falling back into his pod, Minoru guessed. Apparently, he was right on the nose; the poor kid was clutching his head trying to wrap around this.

"H-Holy fuck..." Yosuke muttered, uncharacteristically quiet for the first time in what felt like ages. "It's... it's been that long...? Just how much did we miss...?!"

Yosuke sounded like he was going to choke on his own melancholy. Minoru felt pained by that notion alone, and dared not give it more thought lest he join his friend in his grieving.

Still, a century and three quarters. To Darlami's knowledge, people who were born last decade were expected to see the next century, assuming any good medical care. To _Minoru's_ knowledge, all the worst possibilities came crashing in his mind that even made a stoic person like him reel. The idea that this being a post-apocalyptic world flashed through Minoru's brain, something that paralyzed the silver-haired adolescent for a second. This was quickly dismissed; anywhere that could have dug out a series of cryogenic pods, and then defrosted the inhabitants, at least had infrastructure. So, while a dystopia wasn't out of the question (the notion that the world he inhabited was potentially _Orwellian_ made him almost wish for the alternative of nuclear armageddon instead), it at least had functioning civilization. And advanced technology.

But on the other hand, the world itself didn't need to die for it to have ended as you knew it.

"N-Nanako... Dojima..." Minoru, for the first time since waking up, felt him struggling on his own tears. "Both of them would have died of old age by now. Everyone... Everyone's _gone_ now."

Darlami opened her mouth, then apparently thought better of it, shrinking back.

"Fucking hell! I..." Yosuke put as coherently and accurately as possible. "Holy shit. Holy _shit._ Darlami-san, is Junes still a thing? Is _Yasoinaba_ still a thing? Crap, is there even a country called _Japan_ any more!? Did we get, like, assimilated by the Greater Pan-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere!?"

"I... genuinely have no idea what you're talking about." Darlami said, raising an eyebrow. "Japan is still a signatory independent entity within the greater Systems Alliance."

"Ah. Well, that's a relief - _hang on a damn minute!_ What kind of government _is_ the Systems Alliance in the first place?!" Yosuke's relief quickly turned to frustration. "Are they, like, some kind of dictatorship, or ruled by a council of AIs for humanity's own good, or are they potentially a - "

"No! Please, I urge you to remain calm." Darlami brought her hands up defensively. "The System Alliance is the representative government body of humanity in the galaxy. No autocratic elements are at all condoned by the Alliance; we're a parliamentary democracy representing all nations on Earth, including Japan. Let me assure you that Japan as it stands is even as so far as one of the founding members of the System Alliance! They enjoy strong diplomatic ties with the United States, and have been that way since the 21st Century!"

By the time Minoru finish weeping gently and calmed down, he picked up on what Darlami said, shot a glance at Yosuke, and both boys promptly became even _more_ confused.

_What?_ Systems Alliance? Galaxy?

_Galaxy?!_

Terror quickly evolved into relief upon realizing this wasn't some sort of scenario straight out of Nineteen Eighty-Four, but in its place came frustration upon realizing both boys now have _far_ more questions then they have answers. Darlami, seemingly the intuitive one, interjected just as Yosuke and Minoru raised a finger as if to say something.

"I assure you, we'll explain everything to you when the time comes." Darlami nodded reassuringly. "Until then, stay submerged in the bio-gel pod for, oh, maybe an hour more? Your motor functions should return by that point - as should your memories in all its capacity. So again, don't fret; we'll be sure to explain all that you've missed." 

"...okay, got that." Minoru said, resting back as he tried to run through what he just discovered. So, "galaxy" definitely implied that humanity was largely a spacefaring society now. To work on a galactic level implied FTL, communication-wise at least, almost certainly traveling physically at that rate; space was too big even for a century to be enough time to establish society across multiple solar systems. So, humanity found some way to cheat conventional physics. Heh, Nakajima would have loved it. Who knows, maybe Nakajima was the guy who discovered it.

Though, if humanity now traveled the stars, that brought up another question:

"Did we ever find life out there?"

Darlami blinked, then smiled. "Perhaps... but that's a question better answered at another - "

A buzz came from her wrist, promptly causing her to role her eyes She then pressed her finger on what seemed to have been an earpiece. "Ugh, _excuse_ me! No, I have no time to..." Darlami said this initially with irritation, but it wasn't long before her expression turned into something shocked and disbelieving. "He did _what!? HOW?!"_

The "what" in question was emphasized by the sound of something crashing from down the hall, before there was the sound of an opening door.

Going by the soprano of the screams that followed, apparently Chie and Rise were awake. Going by the clatter, someone also flew out of their pod at warp speed.

"Oh, for the love of...!" An orange hologram materialized around Darlami's arm as she hit a panel on it. "Naepia, will you _please_ escort our archaeologically-minded friend out of the building?! The stupid frog hacked a - "

The door leading to Minoru and Yosuke's room opened.

Darlami turned pale, her voice becoming unusually soft. "...window lock."

The figure that strode in barely seemed to register Darlami as he rushed over to the cryopods, peering down with wide-eyed fascination. Or possibly just wide eyes. "Fascinating. Generations ahead of tech era of humanity, medium shows obvious consistency similar to medi-gel. Burying delayed advancement of medicine generations, pity. Far different potential cultural field, research without Citadel laws. Primitive construction, little miniaturization, likely benefit for keeping patients uninjured in collapse, life preservation kept intact for what seems to have been testing."

The frog man inhaled sharply. "Excellent. Will commence interview with silver-haired one. But wait! Headphones indicate some sort of familiarity with era's technology, so maybe the brown-haired one's the better option. No, no, the silver-haired one simply looks more academically-proficient, or..."

Slowly, above the new... _person's_ rambling, Yosuke cleared his throat. "Um... n-nurse?"

Darlami replied with her teeth clenched hard enough to grate metal. _"Yes?"_

"Is there any side effects to revival?" Yosuke looked on at the self-babbling frogman with mild horror.

"No, you're not hallucinating." Darlami said that with a smile, as much as she was able to do so through incandescent rage. "Your pods are indeed being examined by a horned humanoid frog."

"Ah. Good." Yosuke nodded dumbly, his voice in a whimper. "So my brain's still working."

And with that, Yosuke's eyes rolled back to his head before slumping into unconsciousness.

Minoru looked on towards the unconscious Yosuke before turning to the rapidly-chatting "horned humanoid frog," whom didn't look _completely_ inhuman, even beyond the fact he was bipedal. His face was arranged in the same way as most life on earth; two eyes over a nose, a nose over a tight mouth. His expressions seemed human enough as well, brows changing as he peered intently at Minoru's cryo-pod. 

This had the overall effect of showing the otherworldly contrasts more astutely. Pure dark eyes, without obvious scleroses or pupil, blinked upwards as long, dexterous fingers, three to a hand, brushed over the cryo-pod's console. While Minoru thought of it as a "nose", the nostrils were more jutting out of a thin head, ruddy skin the smooth and slightly shiny texture of an amphibian. Most of his torso was covered in armor, but his build was skinny and wiry, hunched while still upright. And indeed, he had horns, though Minoru wasn't sure if that was the proper term given how they were purely fleshy rather than bone. 

And then, just as Minoru was finishing taking in the sight, an even more bizarre looking figure strode in directly behind the frogman and grabbed him by the scruff of his color with what looked like a bird's claw. _"OUT."_

"Priority, copy specs, estimated two minutes before - "

The new figure gave a surprisingly human growl of frustration, even through a distinctly mechanical flange, and all but lifted the frogman up and dragged him outside, her tall, avian build easily allowing her to cross over to the threshold in about three steps. "You can have your two minutes _after acclimation._ Do _any_ of you understand the concept of 'mental health'?! _Spirits!"_ With that, her own orange hologram materialized as she waved over the keypad, and with that the door closed, sealing both the frogman and the silver dinosaur outside.

Slowly, Minoru inhaled. "...I take it the answer is 'yes, here are two examples'?"

"More or less." Darlami said through the hand on her face. "Welcome to the year 2183, where humanity found the superhighway to the stars... and also that we were late to the party."

* * *

Over the course of the next few hours as the defrosting process finished, Minoru - and after he came to, Yosuke - grilled Darlami about the earlier adopters, in particular the frogman and the sauropod orderly's species.

"The 'frogman' is a salarian, one of the three Council races." Darlami said, pulling up an image of one on her holograms - her omni-tool, as she explained earlier. "They're one of triumvirate that effectively governs interspecies galactic politics, not dissimilar to your Earth's old United Nations. They're, I suppose you could say, short-lived nerds; they only live around 40 years on average and they're nearly always awake, so they're always trying to do something. Combine that with how good their memories are and how fast they think, the average salarian is always trying to know everything, or invent the next omni-tool."

"Forty years?" Yosuke whistled. "I... didn't expect that. You know how in old movies - for us anyway, they've _gotta_ be ancient history for you - the scientist races are generally the really long-lived ones? Guess that assumes they learn at a rate humans do, I guess."

_"And_ assume they know when not to poke the big red button." Minoru said, still feeling a bit violated by the sudden intrusion of one of them. "I guess patience is not one of their virtues."

"I wouldn't say _that,_ but... honestly, we knew there was going to be trouble when salarian historians started getting interested. They _literally_ do not understand why spying is regarded as underhanded. To them, knowing as much as you can about everything is simply a good idea, and that includes other people. They're not evil, or even amoral, but they snoop, and they rarely know their personal boundaries." Darlami changed image to two examples of the sauropod aliens, one with a large hair-like crest. "Naepia's a turian, the second of the three Council species. They're the iron fist; the entire species is an army, and they're _very_ stringent about it. Any adult turian's served in the proper army for a few years as a rite of passage; they're not all soldiers, most were part of the support apparatus, but they're all disciplined and have an idea of how to be. Oh, and on a final note, _don't_ feed them some of our food; they're a dextro species, so your bento and okonomiyaki is poisonous to them."

"Um, not to discredit what you're saying and all..." Minoru said, brow furrowed thoughtfully. "...but her markings. Those look too complex to be natural. They're rank signifiers, right?"

"Nah, they're just colony of origin." Darlami said, pulling up another data entry on them. "It's been a thing ever since they've militarized, since that was after their first interstellar war they had - which was a _civil_ one, I might add. It just showed which side you were on, but now it's assumed that if you don't wear them, you don't meet a basic standard of honesty."

"They don't have giant robots, do they?" Yosuke asked that with some serious hope in his eyes.

"Um... no?" Darlami looked a little surprised. "Dunno what robots have to do with this. Unless you mean the geth, which were created by a whole _nother_ dextro-amino species, which - "

_"Seriously, you don't know Gundam?"_ Yosuke threw his arms up to the sky in annoyance. "Wow, future's really lost some cultural artifacts, man! It's horrifying." Yosuke said that last bit with a shiver. "All is dust... even giant robots."

Minoru sighed. He was almost glad Yosuke was recovering. "Ignore him, please. That aside, who's the third Council race?"

Darlami smirked. "Oh, you're going to love this. Lo and behold!" The half-Polish woman said this, changing holograms again. "The grace of our blue-skinned overlords, the asari."

The short silence that the three enjoyed was interrupted by Yosuke having the dumbest grin on his face Minoru feels he had in a _long_ time.

"Okay, I take _everything I said_ about the future back." Yosuke looked at the 3-D figure _very_ intently. "The future is _awesome!"_

Minoru sighed, shaking his head. That said, it took a second glance to confirm that yes, the image on the screen was an alien, and _not_ a human woman. She was... remarkable, in more than a few ways. One difference between herself and an Earth girl was the fact that she was blue. The second was the tentacles, or at least the tentacle-like _crests,_ placed where a human female's hair would be.

That was about the extent of it. The asari in question looked little more than a tall human woman with some additional caveats. Minoru internally snarked that it was almost like she has walked out of an old science-fiction film.

"Okay, not that I'm unappreciative of the asari's looks..." Minoru said, blinking. "... but I've notice there isn't two pictures. There has to be a male in the species, right?"

"Nope. That's the one and only gender asari have." Darlami said with a nonplussed expression. "They reproduce through neural linking, basically with anyone sentient."

Yosuke leaned a bit closer. _"...anyone?"_

Both Minoru and Darlami shared a look that said everything there was to about teenage boys.

"...that aside, they're extremely long lived, lasting over a thousand standard Earth years, and they're essentially the velvet glove." Darlami said, switching the picture. "They're a species of diplomats, largely, though not anyone you should anger; they're _all_ biotics."

Yosuke blinked. "Uh, aren't we, too? I mean, that means _alive,_ but - "

"The closest term in the Information Age would be psionic. They can't read the future, but they can throw stuff with their minds." Darlami pulled up a final, much more crowded image. "There's at least a dozen other races known to the Council, including us, who don't have a seat. There's elcor, hanar, drell, batarians - even though it's doubly worth noting we do _not_ talk to them much - the volus, vorcha, krogan, quarians... it's a really big galaxy, and going into each species' society, history and culture would take _far_ more time than any of us have."

Minoru blinked as he processed this. He almost looked dumbfounded, but he wore this off by shaking his head.. "Well, now "I feel... small. There's so many peoples out there in the galaxy, isn't there...?" 

"You really don't know the half of it. There's a reason why we've wanted to acclimate you slowly." Darlami said with a sigh, but a smile regardless. "This is... quite a bit of a shift. For all of you. Really, we were almost done with the gradual acclimation with Kujikawa and Satonaka, and - "

_"They're awake!?"_ Yosuke said, shooting up. "Fuck me, I need better priorities - are they okay?!"

Darlami almost paused in her own thoughts, before nervously clearing her throat. "Um, well... Satonaka is..."

* * *

"OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD! _WE'RE IN THE TV WORLD - "_

"Listen ma'am, I assure you you're safe. We don't even have an idea what you mean by - "

"OF COURSE YOU DON'T! _YOU'RE NOT A NURSE, YOU'RE SOME KIND OF TALKING SHADOW THAT WANTS TO EAT US!"_

"Ma'am, will you please - "

_"YUKIKO, PLEASE! PLEASE WAKE UP! WE NEED SUMEO-OMIKAMI SO WE CAN **KILL IT WITH FIRE!"**_

"Gnn... s'rry, Chie... too tired. Still seeing things like giant bipedal frogs..."

* * *

Darlami almost was... blushing? She had to have been mortified "By direct comparison, Kujiwara actually seems to be functioning rationally. She more depressed after coming to from her faint, but she's not yelling about whatever 'Shadows' are."

By this time, Yosuke's expression had got from alarmed to deadpan. "Ugh, of _course._ For future reference, Chie has two modes; either she's the Fearless Dragon Champion of the Foot, or she's freaking out. Don't worry, she'll bounce back in thirty minutes."

The relief that Minoru felt was short-lived, however, and the implication that others were awake sent a shock through the otherwise-calm team. "...shit, is Ayane - "

Right on cue, Darlami's omni-tool beeped. "Ugh, yes? Look, I'm busy with one of my patients, can this _please wait_ until - " Darlami seemed ready to go on an exhausted tirade, but almost in the span of seconds, Darlami's expression lit up in pleasant surprise. "Wait, what was that about - ah. Excellent. _Excellent!_ Thank the gods, the first good news in ages. Uh-huh. Thank you. Bye."

She disconnected her call to smile directly at Minoru. "Well, speak of the devil, and she shall come to! You're in luck; she just finished coming back into consciousn - "

Darlami was quickly interrupted due to Minoru immediately trying to get out of his pod with a leap - and failing spectacularly, falling face first on the ground.

Over Yosuke's wince - and, possibly, a suppressed laugh - Darlami dutifully hoisted the silver-haired boy upwards, setting him down on a nearby cot. "Easy now. Your legs have literally not been stressed for over _a century and a half._ It's going to take time for them to be retrained."

"But..." Minoru groaned in pain of atrophied muscles. "Ayane... she's...!"

"...easy enough to visit, and _not_ worth the risk of straining yourself." Darlami said this as she hit a switch on the cot, which mechanically unlocked its wheels. "Now I would say 'follow me', but this thing does that automatically." 

And with that, the cot wheeled off behind Darlami. Minoru was eventually guided into a room that, thoughtfully, was directly connected between Minoru's and his destination. Halfway down the hallway, he saw a rather solemn-looking redhead girl that he recognized almost immediately - but not before being further wheeled off elsewhere. In the corner of his eye, the submerged cryo-pod contained traces of a blonde humanoid.

The cot's destination gave way to three more pods, only one of which were already open - even though process of elimination was a clear indicator who was in the last two pods. Regardless of such, a certain childlike musician propped up in it, talking with a male human nurse - Minoru had to remind himself there was more than one species qualifier now.

She turned her head in surprise at the opening door, and lit up almost as soon as she saw her boyfriend as he did. Going by the expression of the anonymous caretaker, he did so too.

"Well... I'll leave you two to catch up, I guess." The male nurse said, leaving with Darlami after she placed the cot next to Ayane's pod. "Call me if you need me, Matsunaga-san. It's been nice talking with you!"

And with that, the two teens were alone - barring the soft humming of the cryo-pods.

It took a few minutes to think of something to say. Actually, what _was_ there to be said? Awkward silence was kind of a given since the two were frozen over like that, and despite both teens' efforts to remain cheerful, a dour expression lingered over their faces. Minoru ended up trying to break the ice with his own sense of humor, giving a rather bleak smile in the process of doing so.

"Um... hey, Ayane. Sorry I kind of missed our last date by a few eras."

_That joke went well._ Minoru smiled as Ayane lit up, giggling. Quietly, the smaller teen grasped her hand into Minoru's giving a rather weak smile - definitely not out of physical frailness, unfortunately. "Senpai... it was a dumb idea coming with you for a tuition. I think the food's a couple centuries out of style."

A pause. Rather quietly, the young girl she started to tear up."...we're alone, aren't we, Bumper? Ancient history that breathes and talks. We... we weren't even out in the _solar system_ when we volunteered to be put in these... _coffins_..."

"I know... but we're still alive." Minoru said, smiling softly. "That means we can adapt. It's going to be hard, but... we've overcome worse. We've overcome _much_ worse.

"...yeah." Ayane said, trying to smile. "I mean, you've stopped a goddess from killing objective existence. This? This is easy for you."

"Oh, knock it off. And I thought you'd agree to keep that secret?"

"Not like it matter much now, dummy." Ayane smiled before shaking her head. "But... yeah. Yeah, you're right. We'll find a way to adapt, and you've missed the worst of my emotional reaction. I just... don't know where we'll go from here."

Minoru bit his lip, before thinking up a small little platitude. "Well, me and the team already saved a planet once. How hard can it be just living on _multiple_ planets?"

* * *

"You were right, Captain. They _do_ come off as, uh, ordinary teenagers." Darlami frowned, flipping through the paper file, her mind going a mile a minute with the unusually-physical document. _Paper? Wow, this is either too old to be on the extranet, too secret to risk going on the extranet, or_ both.

"Fits with the dossier Kirijo constructed on them, you mean." Captain David Anderson said as he examined a holomap of the hospital, and all known individuals within. "I was expecting some bias, given her personal feelings about the Investigation Team... but no. They appear to be fairly average civilians for their era, going by your interviews."

"Yeah. Which was, uh... weird." Darlami said as she put down the file. "I'm trained for PTSD and moral support _after_ espionage missions, not acclimation after cryogenic reanimation - and I don't think _anyone's_ dealt with a defrosting case that was more than twenty or twenty-five years past freezing. I'm still not sure why you asked me to interview them."

"Because your original training was dealing with post-pubescent psychology, and I wanted an expert with the security clearance to make an accounting of their mental state." Anderson replied, bluntly. "There isn't a lot of people who fit that description, Nurse."

Darlami - who was actually a doctor in clinical psychology but was a professional nurse - listened into the implication, and felt her brow furrow. "It sounds to me like you're thinking of using them as potential assets."

"I am..." Anderson said, holding up a hand before Darlami could object. "...but not soldiers, mind. Not directly. But Personas and Shadows didn't stop being a thing just because we left Earth."

Darlami reluctantly nodded. "I'm surprised they're still a big secret. Yasoinaba was just one of several major Cognitive incidents around the early 21st century. You'd really think people would notice by now."

"They have. They just don't want to admit it." Anderson began, feeling a slight amount of exasperation with sentience at large. "The vast majority of sapient species prefers not to acknowledge the supernatural at all, and keeps focus strictly on the scientific. Thus, it has always been public, in a sense, but the public refuses to accept the fact it and risk societal disruption to face the fundamentally unpredictable and unexpected. You've noticed something similar when working with covert ops teams, I suspect?"

Darlami groaned. "I get it. Even _politicians_ don't want to hear what goes on with the cloak and dagger contingent. Nobody wants to think about how the sausage is made." To emphasize her point, she sucked in her nose and set her mouth in a distinctly tight - or more accurately, mandible-like - line. "'Ah yes, 'proven history.' The supposed records of conduct and reason we made Saren Arterius our personal operative in the first place fitting in exactly with how he _allegedly_ acted, in a situation that would make a human, a member of a race he has gone on record as despising for concrete reasons, look bad and interfere with the Alliance's political aspirations that would potentially rival that of his own species. _We have dismissed that claim.'"_

"Your concerns about Councilor Sparatus are noted, but he has still proven to be a voice against undue sanctions."

"I know, I know. He's just the easiest for me to imitate." Darlami said, emphasizing her point by making quotation marks with her fingers. "He was _hardly_ the only one looking for an excuse to avoid a human Spectre, though for him it's also the sheer inability to think ill of the Council's longest-serving battleaxe. He's perhaps the only person who actually _likes_ the barefaced psycho."

"Correction; feels enough racial kinship to Saren to feel the duty to defend his actions." Anderson corrected, leaving out exactly what - and who, in particular two other important politicians - he was defended from. "But my own grudge towards Saren can wait. The other reason I am scouting them is that, to be frank, I don't believe the collapse of the Boreas lab was an accident."

Darlami shot up. "Really? I mean, I can see the internal logic; if I remember right, that lab was a converted bomb shelter."

"Precisely. And yet not only did it cave in, but it caved in _so precisely_ that it left the cryopods and their power sources mostly undamaged, but so completely filled in that extracting the pods from the wreckage was impossible under current technology and remaining clandestine." Anderson paused to pull up a different file from the holomap. "And then there's how _we_ detected it."

Darlami walked over, looking over the report. _Routine geological survey, part of Japan Land Restoration project, scans indicated trace amounts of -_

"'Trace amounts of _element zero'?_ What the hell was _eezo_ doing on Earth half-a-mile underground!?"

"Our question exactly. It was theorized that the technology may have been linked to Personas, as part of the Plume of Dusk-derived SI robots. But that was also because we don't understand Personas well - and the Boreas technology is derived from the Plume of Dusk research, without a single hint of mass effect technology."

Darlami paused, processing this. "So, we have a collapsed base that was awfully merciful to the IT, the technology that keep them frosty-but-alive is based on completely different principles than Prothean tech, and yet we have eezo sitting pretty. Yeah, something's _really_ off here."

"There's more to it than just that, Nurse." Anderson said as he flipped through the files. "We've tested the element zero, and we found a very distinct compound form. One that eezo only forms in close association with organic tissues."

Darlami caught on immediately. "Are you saying a _biotic_ destroyed the base!?"

"No. But the only plausible explanation is that one was present on Earth far, far before the discovery of the Mars ruins." Anderson closed the file. "Now. There are two possibilities. The first is that, somehow, a hostile Persona-user or Shadow developed biotic nodules completely independently of the Prothean stores..."

"...or that First Contact happened a lot earlier than the turians." Darlami finished. "You want to know which, and if they, or their heirs, are still around."

"Correct." Anderson looked at the map again. "For right now, though, I am letting them rest and adapt. I doubt this is one of the things that will ever leave them to just live their lives."

Darlami took a second to look at the file once more, just as Anderson politely excused himself. "Now then, I suppose I have clearance to investigate the children? They've all waken up at this point."

Darlami paused for a second before only just realized she was so boggled by the circumstances of the Investigation Team's unearthing that it was night time. "...no, let them sleep in. _Everybody_ present has a long day ahead of them."

"If you say so, Nurse." Anderson politely nodded. "But I won't take no for an answer, just so we're clear. The Investigation Team, according to reports, _slew a goddess._ I don't think that is any small feat worth dismissing so readily."

Anderson opened up his omni-tool before walking out. Darlami was left alone as she gawked at the papers with nightmarish surprise.

"Just... just what the hell is going on here...?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy. It was a long time coming, but boy howdy do we have a new saga to share with you! Two of my favorite RPGs ever, together at last... can't believe I'm doing this while the Mass Effect franchise is on ice, but it's better late than never.
> 
> Stay tuned! Oh, and as a birthday present: expect an update for Another Side and Fall With The Petals sometime this week. ;)
> 
> ~Boyd the Reaver


	2. Brand New World(s)

The citadel was burning, and it was all his fault.

"Damn it all! Extract the artifact! We'll come back another day!" The commander's voice screamed over the intercom, as another dropship disgorged a legion of gun-toting turians and asari war-witches.

At that, he froze on the war-torn battlefield, not even noticing as bullets shredded his chest. "Wait, we can do that!?"

This was rapidly followed by a sigh from the next bed over as two groans rocked through the hospital.

A new dialogue tag appeared in the Galaxy of Fantasy PVP side chat, as the voice of "Trial_Account_4(Thunderweaver)" came over. "Dammit, Yosuke, even I read the rules before I logged in! The Faction War is based on points, if we win the Evac objective we still get a quarter for the Spirited and some more stuff!"

"Hey, this kind of thing wasn't even a genre back in our time, Kanji!" Yosuke shouted back over the group chat. "I mean, I heard of faction wars, but I didn't know there'd be freaking _real-time strategy_ elements!"

"Then why the hell'd you sign up as a _pet class!?_ _"_ A cursor, along with the signifier _Trial_Account_4 Broadcasting (If you wish to stop receiving instructions from this player, please click here) _showed up on Yosuke's holoscreen and orbited in what had to be a very aggressive fashion around the "Asari Ranger" signifier.

"I dunno, I thought the initial pet was cute!" Yosuke said, defensively. "Looks kinda like a seal version of Teddie!"

"Aww, Yosuke, you shouldn't have!", the aforementioned Trial_Account_3(Kuma!) chimed in. "But, I don't want to over-bear here, but seriously, we needed that special ability to stop Yuki from steamrolling the field boss!"

"In all fairness," Trial_Account_2(Minoru) popped in, sounding conciliatory. "I did some research on turian games; pretty much every one of them has some RTS or squad tactics elements. It was actually the fist thing they did once they had good enough computer systems to model the needed statistics, and it's considered the typical genre from them. There's a lot of snark in their review articles about generic strategy that the authors have studied from other games; I don't think I've heard 'mindless default tactics' as a common acronym among games media before. Guess when you have universal conscription, some the tactical drills start to get a bit samey."

"Yeah, and I'd really like some of them!" Yosuke shouted back, exasperated. "I signed on to the easiest, lowest-level map because I wanted to hack and slash away the clock with my buddies, not play, I dunno, flashy chess with them!"

"Oh, come on, chess isn't that hard!" Trial_Account_5(Pyromegera) chimed in as the "Total Defeat" screen popped in, and group chats were no longer isolated by faction. "You just need to memorize common board positions and the possible solutions to them! It's not really a planning game, mostly a reflex one!"

"I'm...actually taking Yosuke's side on this, Yuki," Trial_Account_6(DragonJury) said. "I mean, besides how turians likely _do_ find all this stuff really basic, I took a look at the rules and wow, I thought _our_ time's MMOs were a bit complex. I read on the wiki they're really good at adapting subsystems to non-turians, hence why they've been in operation for like, a decade, but... wow."

"...Where's Naoto, by the way?" Minoru said as he noticed the "Bot Player" signifier on the Tribe side. "I'd thought she signed on with Chie."

"She _did,_ but then she got distracted by the Codex," Yukiko said, the shrug being almost audible. "Chie and I realized that she was still browsing culture, so we agreed we could do a match without her. She should be done soon-"

"In a minute!" Naoto's voice crackled over Yukiko's intercom. "I'm still figuring out the scanning modes of an omnitool! It's important to catch up on forensics!"

"...Maybe we can do another private match while waiting," Yukiko finished, mildly.

"...Actually, if Nao-chan's doing okay," Teddie asked, hesitantly. "How' s Risette doing? I think I heard her scream even when there was still frosting on my fur."

There was a bit of a pause. "She's...coping, I think," Chie said. "I haven't been woken up by her crying for, um, three days, so... that's something. Mostly she just stares at the ceiling." She paused. "On the other hand, I kinda didn't sleep for the first couple nights, so uh, not one to talk about missing home."

There was a longer pause as all present members of the IT felt the truth of their situation settle right back in.

"So," Yukiko began, overly cheerfully, "You want to try another match, or-"

"Actually, no, we need to talk about this," Minoru said, a resolute tone in his voice. "We can't just delay this to group therapy sessions every few days, especially since most of us _are_ doing pretty well, considering." He inhaled. "What's the problem, do you think?"

"...I'm gonna guess it was the fact she was getting back her fame, partner," Yosuke said, scratching his real-world head. "She's on top of the world, then she goes to sleep one day, and bam, it's literally a hundred years later and idols exist as a historical curiosity. That's gotta sting." 

"Tell the truth, she's also freaked out by, well, the aliens," Yukiko said before posting a picture of what appeared to be a green gorilla with armor on his back and a calm expression on his mouthless face. "Take elcor, for instance. I think they're cute, and, well, you _saw_ the video I showed you of Hamlet with...snerk, the _all-elcor_ cast..."

Chie giggled slightly at the remembered image of Ophelia on her notorious rant, as recited by a living tank that spoke part of said rant as "Sweetly in a manner that suggests either dissociation from reality or hidden venom: Give me a violin. I'll sooth his melancholy hours..."

"But I digress," Yukiko continued. "Point is, they don't exactly resemble something from Earth. And yet, they don't look like Shadows either. So Rise lacks a reference point for them." She paused. "Truth is, I think she got nervous when she was told hanar are giant glowing jellyfish, so I don't think she's good with non-hominid life."

There was a sudden notification for Trial_Account_8(Shirogane) requesting to join the private match and its chat, to which everyone immediately voted in approval.

"Hey Naoto," Kanji said, sounding a bit cheered up. "How's the omnitool exploration coming?"

"I figured it might be better to have one of my own first before examining the apps. I do not know how they interact yet, and there is a literal universe of technical specifications I do not understand yet. More importantly, though," Naoto said as her professional tone softened a bit, "I gleaned from the context we are discussion Kujikawa's issues with adapting to the current era?"

"...How loud was I talking?" Yukiko said, a blush creeping into her real face.

"Not very, but I noted something was an issue when you stopped making war cries and laughing maniacally," Naoto said with a somewhat deadpan tone. "But if these issues at all resemble what came up in therapeutic sessions, I assume it's because xenospecies do not resemble ones from our contemporary time period. I believe Kujikawa was expecting apparently human ones with mild facial features at most. About the only species that does anything resembling that archetype are asari, and their very reproductive practices shows them as an exception that proves the rule. I believe she feels even more alienated than we do, and combined with the complete loss of her social position..." Naoto trailed off.

"...Is there anything we can do?" Teddie said, pensively. "It get beary depressing to see Rise-senpai like this..."

"Unfortunately, I think being there for her is all we _can_ do. I am not a psychiatrist, and before we do have a recommendation, I do not have the authority or skill to make a plan." The tone made it clear she was as much as happy about this as Teddie. 

"...So," she finished, a bit of forced cheerfulness in her own voice. "Do you wish to change team compositions? I believe you can switch sides between Federation and Tribes as a trial account to equivalent characters on either end, allows for experiencing both sides."

"Dude, _thank you."_ Yosuke put his cursor to the abysmally Furious-weighted win-loss ratio. "I'm tired of getting steamrolled by a bunch of grimdark space pirates!"

"Hey, better spikes, leather and freedom than sparkles and tyranny, Mr. StorefrontFrog!"

"Ugh," Trial_Account_7(TromboneOfDoom) chimed in. "This is why I stick to PVE. Less inter-party fighting..."

* * *

After about two weeks of mostly staring at the ceiling, Rise realized that counting tiles in the roof over and over again probably wasn't making her feel any better. 

Admittedly, what she normally did to feel better wasn't exactly a better option. For one, her legs still weren't working right. She could walk and even jog a bit - a miracle of medigel and nanomachines she guessed, she was thinking it would be six months until she could walk without a crutch. But dancing was still way outside her motion capacity right now.

For another, her first attempt at singing to herself in the bed resulted in memories of other idols she had performed with, all dust now. All that managed to do was throw just what had happened into perspective. She didn't have much memory of the next ten minutes, except holding on to the (human, thankfully) nurse for dear life and her tear ducts hurting from overexertion.

And she thought being overstressed from trying to contort her personality into the ideal idol image was overwhelming. Ha.

Really, it wasn't the aliens. Rise knew that her discomfort with the... giant, mouthless gorillas was unfair. Being woken up by one of them jumping down from the window and vaulting over her was a bad first experience with otherworldly sentients, but Naepia seemed nice enough. It took her a second to get used to someone whose mouth seemed to be somewhere between a normal mouth and a bird's beak, but apart from her metallic sheen, the orderly seemed pretty human. Definitely understanding of how Rise felt.

"My people were pretty much the same," she had said. "We were just winding down from the horror of the Unification Wars, then we got rung up by the Council and find, to them, a galactic civil war was hardly worth mentioning. It was... a shift, to say the least."

Of course, turians had an entire non-civil galactic war to prove their worth and place in the galaxy (and Rise had to admit, with some internal embarrassment, that she was glad it was the turians who won; the krogan didn't exactly look unthreatening, and from everything she had read from the hospital's library on the enormous, warlike, Darwinistic turtles had confirmed that initial fear - except for the genophage, that sounded kinda cruel to do to anyone), as opposed to one borderline prehistoric singer, but she appreciated the thought. 

So yeah. She thought elcor looked creepy, krogan were one in her top five types of people to not meet, and after asking Chie to look up the Shiny, Happy People's Republic of Khar'shan meme Yosuke had joked about, she pretty much shared the general human opinion of Batarian Pricks Shove Off. But it wasn't the aliens' fault that they evolved in a way that made them look weird.

It was that they were yet more reminders she didn't need to know about what era she was in, and how many of her friends were dead.

She didn't want to think about what would happen to her if _all_ were dead.

Sighing, she heaved herself up, the loose hospital gown falling over the gurney. A brief twinge of pain as her still-healing legs jumped back from the pressure hit her, causing her to wince as she sat up. "Hey Chie," she began, voice hoarse from lack of use.

Chie, busy browsing Citadel Security's homepage out of curiosity for what turian cops were like, squeaked and nearly dropped the hospital tablet, causing interesting visual effects as the hologram automatically rotated to fit its new shape but then changed midway through. "...Hi Rise!" Chie's mouth split in a semi-genuine smile. "How are you...uh..." The smile shrank as the question trailed off.

"'S fine as can be," Rise said with a bleak attempt at her own smile. "Given the circumstances..."

There was a long pause as Chie tried to find a way to continue the conversation without upsetting Rise.

Rise decided to spare her the effort. "How do the holograms work?" she asked as she leaned towards the tablet.

"Oh, well, I guess it's kind of like a touchscreen!" Chie tilted the C-Sec website's hologram towards her to demonstrate. "The actual console's kinda like both the manual controls and the fine-tuning, to browse links you wave your hand over it, like this!" She grabbed a bit of the stylized logo of C-Sec and widened her fingers, zooming in. "A lot of extranet sites are 2D, but C-Sec wanted to draw more people in, I guess!"

"Huh. Neat."

There was another long pause.

"So," Chie began. "You, uh, wanna try it?"

Rise lifted her hand, only to wince and draw it back. "... still not ready," she murmured. "Sorry, but... I still don't wanna know..." _What happened to Earth while I was out,_ she didn't say.

"Hey, hey, it's okay." Chie gave a comforting smile. "Nobody's asking you to."

"... You do realize," Rise began, a half-smile on her face, "That you're repeating the _exact words_ of the group therapist?"

"... Yeah, sorry." Chie rubbed the back of her neck. "I uh, don't have any great insights."

"It's fine. You're here." Rise gave a smile.

There was another pause, before Rise cleared her throat. "When we get out, can I crash at your place?" 

"... Uh," Chie blinked. "Why? I mean, we all have free housing-"

"For a year," Rise said, looking down. "And I don't think they'll pay for food. So I'm wondering whose home I can sleep in before I get thrown out on the street."

Chie's eyes widened. "Rise, what do you-"

 _"I don't have a job!"_ A second later, the singer blushed at the sudden shriek."I... I'm sorry. But..." She sighed. "What do I have to offer? I can act, but I don't even think I can speak the modern dialect of Japanese without a translator. I can sing, but I don't even know if J-Pop is a style that exists any more. All I have is my face, and well..."

She pointed at a portrait of an asari doctor, with a holorgaphic nameplate indicating she was the one the local wing was named after. "Look at her. She was 500 years old when that was painted, I asked. For her, that was _middle age._ I would _murder_ people to look like that at middle age! And she was a professional surgeon, not a model, or a singer or an... is actress the proper term when you're dealing with a species with only one gender? Never mind."

"Point is," Rise said as she curled up into a fetal position, "What am I supposed to do when compared to... that? An _entire species_ of models who age in centuries, who are born beauties, who have been working the galactic scene for longer than I've been _alive_ \- frozen existence _included_ \- just to be taken seriously by their own kind? How is some random teenager from a century ago going to _start_ competing with them? Hell, how am I going to appeal to people who aren't even my own species!? I mean, it's not like I've spent my entire life chasing fame already-"

"Rise-"

"But now I have to worry about a galactic market for species who probably think I look like I've been _skinned-"_

"Rise!"

"Oh, and don't forget, I'm also on the scene with people, _human_ people who were _born_ here while I might as well be from a _different universe-_ _"_

Rise's increasingly frantic ranting was cut off by Chie using her own recovering legs to walk over and hug her. 

"No, no, don't touch me-I haven't finished-I... I..."

 _Ah hell,_ Rise thought as she felt the all-too-familiar building pressure in her eyes. _I'm crying again._

She was like that for what had to be a few minutes, sobbing while trying to half-coherently continue her ramble, before she felt her shoulderblades still, and her language return. "It's just... It's just _so hard,"_ Rise said between shuddering inhales. "I... I just wanted to not worry about tuition. You... You still have something. There's always gonna be a place for cops, or hotel managers, or tailors, or lawyers, or tuba players. Me? 'M an idol. Somethin' that only existed in the 21st century, and the 21st century's... gone. And now... And now... What the hell am I gonna do?"

"Rise... Rise, look at me."

The singer pulled back a bit, letting her reddened eyes meet Chie's.

"I'm scared too. I nearly _attacked_ a salarian because I thought he was a _Shadow._ I'm still pretty creeped out by them, to be honest. It's the eyes. But Rise - you've got something I don't think any asari can have."

Rise wiped her eye. "And that is?"

 _"Your_ talent. Not theirs. The one thing an asari can't do is sing like Rise, because _she's not Rise._ You are. Sure, they can compose their own songs, but an asari singer's not going to have is your perspective, your lyrics, your memories. _Nobody_ knows what it's like to be Rise, because you're the only Rise there is. Your songs? They're going to be uniquely yours, never theirs."

"Besides," she finished with a wry smile. "I don't think 'I am a two hundred year old unfrozen relic of Earth' is _ever_ going to have brand competition."

Rise giggled despite herself. "Yeah. Yeah, I've got novelty covered. Also, yeah, I'm probably pretty famous already, just not, y'know, for being a singer. If nothing else, I can probably rock the autobiography section."

"See?" Chie said, smiling. "Silver lining! Besides, y'know, the color of the ice."

"Yeah. Yeah, thanks." She inhaled. "So. Heard you were playing a lot of an online game. Can I join?"

* * *

And for the next couple weeks, all was well.

Well, okay, not _entirely_ well. Rise still instinctively flinched away from the trio of salarian medics that seemed the experts in the artificial part of the physical therapy, for one. She was the worst, but Ayane often found herself waking from nightmares of a cold wasteland devoid of all other life, and Kanji, Naoto, and Minoru resolutely refused to think about anything to do with their families. But it was definitely a step up from the period directly post-awakening.

Which was part of what the last group therapy discussion was about.

"All right then," the psychologist, an asari by the name of Dr. Niza T'Gondri, said with a smile. "As you may have heard, this will likely be our last mandated session together, though I am not remiss to further sessions."

 _Assuming you get paid,_ Yosuke managed to clamp back on. T'Gondri was a nice woman, she didn't deserve the sarcasm that line provoked. 

Minoru took over for a bit instead. "You've been a big help, Doctor. Feels like we kind of know what to expect." He paused. "To the extent we can."

"Well, that's why they hired me," T'Gondri said with a shrug. "My people are the closest thing there is to, ah, a gradual introduction to the myriad forms of life."

"Assuming," Chie began with a flat tone, "That we were able to forget a salarian breaking in so he could play alien probe keeper with us."

"You're still upset about that?" Naoto asked with some mild surprise. "I don't agree with his lack of respect for medical quarantine procedures, but I can understand the enthusiasm towards such a priceless trove of historical and archeological technology information..."

"Yeah, uh, that's good for you," Yosuke said with a shiver. 

"Our overly enthusiastic guest aside," T'Gondri interjected, "I wanted to talk about what you wanted to do after you're formally welcomed to the modern age."

"... First, why we gotta have it all formal?" Kanji asked, raising an eyebrow. "I just kinda want to get my life off t' ground, don't want it to be a friggin' reality show..."

"It's expected," she admitted. "The discovery of living people from so long ago in Earth's history is the kind of thing that lights up the extranet; everyone wants to know if they woke up, and it's a good way for the Alliance to get some good PR for recognizing their past. That, and I need to admit to existence of the Junes Conglomerate. They're pretty excited about discovering a near-ancestor of some of their board members."

There was a very long pause at that.

"Junes..." Yosuke began. _"Conglomerate?"_

"It's not the largest company in the galaxy, and not quite a household name," T'Gondri said. "But they're extremely wealthy and a very large support for the Alliance's shipping operations. Ever since they acquired the Kirijo Group they've also had a business in pseudo-retro weapons. Magnetic revolvers and the like. They're also known for their 'Old Earth' image, so..." She shrugged. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want that to be a source of stress."

"Are you kidding!?" Yosuke said, eyes bright. "My family owns a megacorporation! I'm filthy stinking rich!"

"... Well, karma had to make balance eventually," Ayane said, still a bit shocked.

"... Please don't buy anythin' gold," Kanji said, wincing. "Take it from me, it doesn't suit ya."

The mental image of himself in a mostly gold outfit snapped Yosuke out of his excitement. "Oh. Oh God, that's a painful image. Gah. Still getting my own space yacht with a pool and everything, but... Agh. My poor mental eyes..."

Yukiko suppressed a giggle. "Speaking of, I am going to see what happened to the Amagi Inn." She paused. "Though... Are space hotels more popular now? With as much interstellar travel as there is, I can see a view of the planet and ability to hop from continent to continent more appealing..."

"To be honest," T'Gondri said, "It's not that easy to jump in and out of an atmosphere. Recreational stations are regarded more as pit stops for ships that don't actually want to go through the business of landing or are waiting for something else. As it turns out, the inside of a bulkhead isn't something tourists are generally looking for."

"Oh, good!" Yukiko smiled in relief. "I don't have to deal with learning how to maintain a space station then. Though... Yosuke, can I tap you for a loan to buy up a resort, if the Amagi lineage is dead?"

"Hey, who says anything about 'loans'?" Yosuke said, the Gold Suit Hanamura mercifully fading from his mind. "I think a few million creds is way small compared to my great fortune."

"Oh! Can Teddie get a bit of money too to... Impress?" The blonde boy wiggled his eyebrows, leaving absolutely nothing up to the imagination of what he wanted it for.

"I think Satonaka and myself are more involved with policing," Naoto began, calmly tearing the subject away from Teddie being lecherous. "I am also interested in possibly discovering the basics of this technology; while I do not have the technical background for much of this, I do wish to continue the Shirogane detective line, even if it has skipped several centuries, and the advances in forensic science should be able to assist greatly."

"Though, I'm not bothering with trying to learn tech that literally wasn't invented for most of my life," Chie continued. "I'm fine just being the patrol girl for, I dunno, Alliance Security. C-Sec seems to require a lot more tech than I can use. Naoto's really picking up how to use an omni-tool though."

"Though not the programming language..." Naoto muttered. "That is... Irritating."

"Me, I'm goin' back to sewin', I guess," Kanji said with a shrug. "I'm used to it, and machines can't do everythin', no matter how advanced."

"I'm going to see if I can't learn modern styles of music," Ayane said. "It can't be that hard. Classical is classical."

"And I guess I'll finish law school," Minoru finished. "The legal system can't be that different in the Alliance from Earth's old laws. I didn't see any apocalypses leading up until now, so I think the judiciary works similarly enough."

"From my experience, ideas of legality do not really change so long as there isn't a grand disruption, so that is a good plan." She paused. "Of course, my kind measure generations in millennia, so we don't change that much to begin with. Not at a rate anyone notices. So I may be biased."

There was a long pause as the last would-be speaker remained silent.

Eventually, T'Gondri cleared her throat. "Ms. Kujikawa, if you don't wish to say, that's fine, but I would like to know if you just want to keep your answer private-"

"That's the problem," Rise admitted. "I'm still not sure what I want; I get that I can probably be an entertainer still, but..." She sighed, pulling something up on an omni-tool now around her wrist. "I'm still not sure if I can adapt to the culture. I mean, I've been looking at pop music styles, and - how do you _pronounce_ some of these genres?"

T'Gondri took a look at the hologram. "I don't think you have to worry about turian styles; it's literally impossible to sing _cantoi_ without mandibles, and nobody expects you to."

"Yeah. Still, I feel a bit more confident then I did, but that's still... not much." She paused, then smiled slightly. "Still, I'm not scared of leaving the hospital any more, so that's something."

"Indeed," T'Gondri said with her own smile. "That's a definite improvement."

Internally, however, the asari psychologist (and sometime moral support for spies aligned with the Republics and their interests) winced and hoped nobody saw her personal tell of less enthusiasm. _They have no idea what the Alliance wants them for, do they? I sincerely hope you know what you're doing, Darlami._

* * *

Eventually, the day of the Great Welcoming Ceremony to the Present, as Yosuke put it, finally came.

Naturally, there was no small amount of stage fright.

"Why is this even a formal ceremony!?" Naoto's face burning gave an interesting color contrast to her hair and the formal suit she was wearing. "Isn't there a medical reason to avoid this kind of stress with public speaking about emotionally fraught subjects!?"

"Really?" Rise cocked her head. "We're not even asked to speak. This is literally just a photo-op for the Alliance to show we're up and about."

"Viewed by _the population of the galaxy!"_ Naoto shot back. "I believe that is an unacceptable stressor!" 

Kanji realized that at this point, he needed to step in. "Hey, Nao? You don't have to show if you don't want to. Claim ya got sick from a mutant cold or something-"

"No, no, that would expose the hospital to scrutiny they don't deserve for malpractice." She sighed. "I suppose I have been... emotional, about this."

"With good reason!" Chie pointed frantically at the closest thing she could find to her normal greenish coloring and still formal. "This doesn't suit me at all! I'm going to be a meme about having a fashion sense literally two hundred years out of date!"

"Chie, that wouldn't be bad!" Yukiko offered, desperately. "I mean, we _are_ literally relics of that age, it makes us look, um, very authentic!"

"I _don't care_ about that, I care about _not having my face everywhere in the cosmos!"_ Chie wrung her hands. "I don't wanna be mobbed by archeology maniacs when I'm buying groceries!"

... Okay, Yosuke _couldn't_ let that by. "Yeah, I suspect they'd be overwhelming with the health inspectors trying to prevent another toxic pollution-ow!"

Ayane withdrew from the surprisingly forceful finger flick. _"That aside,_ Chie, listen to me." 

Much to her credit, Chie lowered her hands, exhaling.

 _"This is nothing._ Take it from someone who looks like she never had puberty. You look _great,_ and even if you didn't, you're literally something _nobody here has ever seen before._ Nobody with a soul is going to mock you because you picked the wrong shade of green."

Chie took a breath. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right."

"Hate to break up the pep talk," Minoru said, coming back in. "But Captain David Anderson's reached the halfway point of his speech and we're being asked to go backstage."

Everyone nodded, and with an absolute minimum of fuss, all filed into the back of atrium Anderson was using for the GWCP. Which, honestly, looked a great deal like any 21st century backstage; apparently theater, political or otherwise, had reached "don't fix what ain't broke" stage and never left it.

"It's beary strange though," Teddie whispered as he watched the dignified naval officer come into the climax of "remembering the past of all species, humanity not alone," and other rather honestly generic motivational messages towards peace between species. "Why's a captain introducing us? Shouldn't he, I dunno, be up in space, going pew-pew and blasting space pirates?"

"That's..." Yukiko paused. "Honestly a good point. Shouldn't we have a historian introducing us or something? Or at least a representative of Junes, given how their latest stockholder just got revived."

"Beats me," Minoru agreed. "But we can save it for after the show."

It was not long before Anderson gave a near-imperceptible nod to the well-dressed, military-looking woman behind the curtain, and she began to usher the IT on stage.

Even as they came out, the crowd erupted into applause. A crowd that perfectly demonstrated just how diverse the galaxy was.

Most of the audience were humans and the Council races, of course. That was colorful enough to have pink-to-dark skin next to shades of blue, metallic carapaces, and amphibian pigments. Here and there, though, more species than what the Investigation Team were used to were found. Volus, short but standing out due to the designs on their their stout environmental suits. A few hanar floated serenely to the back, apparently having found a way to clap using their glow-to-speech translators. A couple elcor hit the ground twice with their massive arms in place of actually being able to clap with them (though the more research-minded members of the Team doubted they saw the point in applauding either). 

"Without further preamble," Anderson said as he turned to the defrosted teens, "I would like to welcome you to the modern day, and give you both the welcomes of the Alliance, and our commemorations."

Pretty much every member of the team was immediately reminded of high school graduation ceremonies. The more things changed, the more things remained the same.

Pretty much every member also noticed something that looked out of place as Anderson directed them to another marine, one by one, for a plaque and commemorative omni-tool.

Up close, he looked like he was feeling troubled. Or outright guilty.

* * *

The reason why would become more clear an hour later, when Nurse Darlami came in with an oddly grim expression.

"... Captain David Anderson wishes to see you," she said, looking downcast, with a tone that screamed _please don't hate us._ "He's in the next room."

This was not a thing that enthused anyone present, but not seeing another choice, all entered. 

Up close, Anderson appeared almost as dignified as he did when giving a speech. Controlled, calmed, and with a posture that would have radiated authority, were it not for the fact he seemed to be avoiding their eyes. He nodded to them as they came in. "You'll have to forgive us for that preamble and speech. I can't imagine that it was the least mortifying thing anyone has ever done."

Naoto and Chie gave each other a knowing (and sympathetic) look.

"... Thank you, captain," Minoru said, a note of suspicion creeping into his voice. "It's very... polite of you to apologize."

Anderson quickly picked up on this. "I take it you also realize the reason I was the one making the speech is something I am not particularly pleased with?"

"You have quite potentially the most obvious tells I have ever seen in a military officer," Naoto said, bluntly. "It's obvious you're trying to hide something."

Anderson shrugged. "I actually consider myself good with lies of omission, but I can't lie to those I consider on my side." He sighed. "I won't try to dress this up in flowery language; the Alliance knows about Personas."

There was a brief pause, before Yosuke cottoned on to _exactly_ what Anderson was getting at. "No. No, not if you froze me for a million more years, no. I am going to go to a resort planet and try to catch up on my new company and pick up business tricks. We are _not_ going to be your freaking _super soldiers."_

Anderson winced. "We are not planning on enlisting you for military-"

Kanji blinked. "Huh? I don't follow. 'M still reeling from how the heck he knows!"

"Kanji," Naoto began through gritted teeth. "He is a military man, obviously unhappy with his orders, who is starting off by telling us he knows about our own special powers."

"Oh." Kanji's eyes widened in realization, before he gave Anderson a glare that seemed to speak of Kanji trying to set the man on fire with his mind. "Okay. What. The. Hell. Is. Wrong. With. You?" 

"Kanji states my feelings exactly," Yukiko said with a tone that could chill a sun. "Perhaps with less foul language directed at your superiors, but I find it interesting the first thing the Alliance suggests is to utilize the _just revived_ as assets..."

"Oh, and don't forget," Ayane said with a smile that reminded all present of a clean skull. "The fact that one of us _isn't a Persona user._ Were you planning to disappear me to some backwater death planet to hide me for knowing classified info, or did you plan to just cut me adrift and wondering if my boyfriend was still alive that day?"

There was a long pause as Anderson apparently waited for continuing criticism, before he sighed. "All those criticisms are... entirely valid. This is an immensely cruel thing to ask, and I don't blame you for being angry. But - we actually don't need a Persona corps. We have one, and what I was about to suggest wasn't that you become military agents."'

The rage Minoru felt dissipated in the face of surprise and curiosity. "You... have your own Investigation Team?"

"Actually, people who naturally awoke to their Personas and were either soldiers beforehand, or who accepted our offer - after an entire life of being citizens of the Alliance." Anderson hit something on his own omnitool, causing a unique insignia - a purple eye with the Greek letter Psi for a pupil - to show up as a hologram. "Not an official unit of course, but our first and best line of defense against anomalies of the universal unconscious. We are _not_ asking you to join, simply be civilian consultants experienced with more bizarre and blatant anomalies."

"Which is still likely going to involve _shooting people,_ and thus, _being shot at."_ Rise crossed her arms. "I think I speak for everyone when I say you need more than that."

"Ten minutes," Anderson said, raising a placating hand. "That is all I ask. I just need to explain why the Alliance is so interested, and why I came here as recruiter under a cover. You can accept or reject with my blessings, but it has to do why we think you were frozen for nearly two centuries."

There was a very long beat as all the Investigation Team processed this.

"... Ten minutes, plus what time you need to answer any probing questions." Naoto said, stroking her chin. "But you will answer those questions, and we catch you in a lie, we are leaving, and you will have made a rival."

"Thank you." Anderson fiddled with the omnitool again, causing a holographic projector to swivel into an active position on his desk and reveal, of all things, a slideshow titled "Case EARLY HOUSE CALL." 

Yosuke and Yukiko suppressed a snort despite the mood.

"Behold, the military," Anderson said, dryly. "But I digress," he said as he clicked to a series of charts. "I'll cut to the chase. We found the place you were buried largely because of some anomalous readings. Tell me, how many of you know about element zero? And how it isn't found on Earth?"

Pretty much everyone's hand went up.

"Good. We found traces of it on Earth," he said, pointing to a low, but noticeable, bar in the graph.

There was a long silence.

"...It could have been an engine leak," Naoto said, thoughtfully.

"That is what we thought, for a while. But the signal was found below the surface." He changed slides, this one a picture of construction equipment excavating an urban area. "We still thought it was something to do with us, maybe groundwater contamination. But no, what we found," he said as he changes the slide once more, "Was a remarkably well-preserved laboratory, which seemed to belong to the venerable Kirijo Group. Collapsed, but with several still-functioning cryopods."

And uncovering a very familiar underground bunker and the even more familiar caskets was exactly what the picture showed.

Chie didn't seem that impressed. "So, you found us with a small pile of eezo. Big whoop. You still haven't explained why-"

"Getting to that." Anderson changed the view to a chemical molecule of element zero. "This is a bit of the trace element zero we retrieved. While the exact chemistry eludes me, this kind of isotope is only found in organic tissues - quite simply, it's the trace left by a biotic using their abilities."

Yukiko tilted her head. "Okay. So that would mean-" Her eyes widened at the same time as Naoto's and Minoru's.

"... That's impossible," Minoru said, not at all in a skeptical tone, but a flat statement of suddenly uncertain fact.

"... Um, partner, layman's terms for the slower students in the-"

"Element zero, exposure to which causes the manifestation of biotic abilities, is not naturally found on Earth," Naoto began, voice devoid of emotion. "For there to be this particular isotope there to begin with, there had to be at least one biotic."

 _That_ cleared up things fast. "Wait, _what?_ _"_ Teddie suddenly sat up very straight. "But we were buried a beary long time before we met any biotics!"

"Exactly my point," Anderson said. "Thankfully, among the recovered items was a security hard drive. We weren't able to extract much from it, just a few images, but a couple of them answered that particular question. Unfortunately... well, see for yourself."

The slide changed.

Chie nearly fell out of her chair, the sheer volume of "WHAT!?" from Kanji could probably be heard from the Citadel, and Rise nearly choked on the water she was sipping.

The two figures (well, four, but given how two of them were obviously Personas, two package deals) in the still image were both not images that, by themselves, were that bizarre. One of them was Mitsuru Kirijo herself, eyes nearly white with rage as she directed Artemisia's ice to the other figure. It wasn't even particularly difficult to see why her notoriously stoic demeanor had fallen away, given the bloody corpses of three lab tech beneath the chaos.

It was the other figure, stoic, feminine, and covered in white markings, directing her own shining Persona with a face that led to the starry void to block the attack, that caused the reaction.

The other, _blue_ figure.

"...Gwuh," Yosuke began, summing the thoughts of his entire team into a single sound. "Bwuh. An-agah. Th... Is that even _possible?_ Can asari even _have_ Personas!?"

"You've talked to them," Anderson said, plainly. "The description is the 'archetypal mask used by the mind to greet life', isn't it? Pretty much every sentient species has a similar psychological mechanism as part of having a psyche not altogether unfamiliar to humans, so all species have the hypothetical ability to awaken a Persona. I would not exactly lose a bet that at least every other Citadel race has their own Persona-user corps, probably most of the others too."

"Point. Okay, so, only _three_ impossible things on the screen. Gotcha." Yosuke just shook his head. "I... just... I've got nothing."

"In this..." Naoto said, eyes as wide as saucers. "We are in agreement. Just... Who is she? _What_ is she?"

"How did she get there?" Yukiko said, the impossibility of a single asari managing to not only unlock, but relock, a mass relay and leave without anyone noticing the interference with it someday. "How did she leave?" A sudden thought. "Did she... have something to do with why we were trapped underground?"

"Which brings us to my actual pitch," Anderson said as he switched the slides one more time, to a bullet pointed plan. "We know now why Ms. Kirijo spent most of her later life throwing her company's money into space exploration, at least. Of course, the fact that I'm even talking about her later life only deepens the mystery, since even a single living witness could lead to the excavation of the pods, even if Kirijo herself understandably never brought up the fact she was attacked by an extraterrestrial. However, once we extracted these images, the Alliance engineers realized that the collapse was so total, so precise to leave your caskets intact, that it looked suspiciously like a controlled detonation. An experimental model proved that even a single individual using portable charges of the type in vogue by asari mercenaries of the time could bury the bunker so completely it would require current-day construction equipment to unearth it safely."

Rise, having cleared her drink, suddenly shot up, eyes widening before turning hard. "... She did it," she growled. "She's the one that trapped us."

"A reasonable assumption, one shared by Alliance high command. We also have no idea why, or even if she's still alive." Anderson got up. "Based on her appearance, though, we can assume she was in the matron stage of her life cycle, likely an early shifter to that stage. It's more than likely she's just getting the hang of being a matriarch now, if she hasn't died of unnatural causes. What she wanted, why she buried you, even her _name,_ all unknown."

Minoru caught on. "You want us to help you find her. She's interested in us, so we can lure her out."

"That is the primary objective, yes," Anderson said as he clicked up more bullet points. "In addition, we know from Ms. Kirijo's personal journals that you, Mr. Sakamoto, possess a pair of unique abilities, one beyond any member of the conventional Unconscious-Related Incidents Unit; one is the Wild Card, as she put it, and the other is your ability to form portals into the 'TV World', where Shadow-related phenomenon are more clear and blatant."

Naoto began to nod in understanding. "There's something we can do you can't. You want that perspective for incidents you can't understand otherwise."

"Purely on a nonviolent scouting basis, I can assure you," Anderson said as he changed the slide to one outlining the perspective employment plan. "It will be entirely voluntary. You can refuse any mission for personal reasons and negotiate your deployment in any reasonable way. In return, the Alliance will utilize its legal authority to both pay you and to grand you special opportunities that will not only allow you to integrate, but thrive above and beyond the normal support we are giving you. Of course," he finished, closing the slideshow, "I am asking your permission to even approach you. If you want to walk out that door, you may, and this conversation will have never happened."

There was a long pause, before Minoru silently waved at the other members of the Team to huddle up. "Can we discuss this privately?"

Anderson nodded. "Call me when you have come to a decision," he said, going through the front door.

As soon as he left, Yosuke inhaled. "Well," he began, mildly impressed. "I'm guessing he was always wanted for recruitment duty. He could teach used car salesmen a thing or five."

"The offer is... tempting," Naoto admitted. "I wish to understand who she is us as much as he does. But, on the other hand... it sounds like Kirijo-senpai was the _only_ survivor."

"Yeah, but that's kind of why _I'm_ leaning towards signing up," Chie said, brow furrowed. "There were dozens of people in that bunker, and she killed all but _one_ of them. That's someone who's a danger to the _galaxy,_ and given how she's accepted herself, I don't think she's _ever_ going to stop."

"There's also the _revenge_ factor," Rise said as she cracked her knuckles. "That... _woman_ took away everything we knew, and killed a bunch of people in the process. She's accumulated about two centuries worth of karma, and I'm eager to indulge some _justice."_

"Still," Kanji said, looking a bit disturbed. "'M not exactly _happy_ with being asked to do someone's _dirty work_ neither..."

"Kanji has a point," Yukiko said, looking more uncertain than anyone had seen her in a while. "I'm not exactly eager to match wits with a millennia old murderess, not after what we've been through already, and then having to wake up in an entirely new _era?_ That's a bit much for _anyone."_

There was a long pause, before Ayane hesitantly cleared her throat. "I'm not a Persona-user, but..." She inhaled. "I vote that we, or you at least, sign up."

"Ayane-" Minoru began.

"Bumper, I'm not done yet," she said, calmly but firmly. "Look. I'm not a part of this. I don't know what you've been through. But... I know that asari, whoever she is? She's a person who not only decided that an entire bunker of people was an acceptable loss for... whatever she wants, but that it wasn't so bad if someone _completely uninvolved_ got trapped too. Granted," she amended, blushing. "I don't think I'd be in any better a spot if I thought my boyfriend died in a cave-in, and I know _he'd_ be in an infinitely worse spot to wake up here all alone, but it's still heartless, and _I don't know why._ I don't care if it's part of some plan to save the galaxy, and she doesn't come off as a maniac if she explains why, I want to know _why_ in the first place. More than that, I want to know the _truth._ And isn't that why you formed in the first place?"

There was a long silence.

"... I'm going to write a 'no shooting' clause into the deal," Yosuke said. "I have a _company_ to be part of."

"Within reason," Naoto cautioned. "I'd still advise combat training, as this _is_ a military operation."

"Yeah, and Shadows probably are hurt by mass drivers as much as bullets," Chie said. "And they're cheaper."

"It'll be fun, if nothing else," Yukiko said. "I foresee a lot of management headaches in my future, and better a Shadow than stubborn employees."

"See, now I _have_ to come," Kanji said, ruefully. "I need ta make sure those are the _only_ things being shot."

"Don't forget the living radar," Rise said, a small smirk on her face. "Both of them."

"Aw, you remembered! I'm so beary happy," Teddie said. "And you've got this bear's claws too!"

"... I'm still not sure," Minoru said, drawing Ayane a bit closer. "It's kind of, well, _mean_ to do this to-"

"What are you talking about?" Ayane interrupted. "I'm coming too!"

"I-" Minoru blinked. "What?"

"Bumper, ask yourself," Ayane began, patiently. "How do think _I_ felt the moment you told me about the TV World? The murderer shoving people in there? The monsters?" She held up a finger to shush Minoru. "Every day, I was wondering the moment I'd see _you_ hanging from a TV antenna. Even if it's just the mascot or crew entertainment, I'm _not_ being separated from you."

Minoru considered this, and then with a silent nod, knocked on the door, which quickly opened to reveal a glum-looking Anderson.

The leader of the Investigation Team inhaled. "We're going to haggle a bit, but as it stands, we're in."

The glum look vanished, completely replaced by pleasant surprise. "I- That is... Not what I expected, but I am quite pleased. Thank you."

"Yep," Yosuke said, leaning back. "We're heroes. It's not good for our image to turn down ye olde new quests."

"Besides," Teddie said, a cheeky smile on his face, "I don't think any planets are being swallowed up by fog, so it's not like the galaxies gonna end because we took our honey-sweet time figuring things out!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did we mention this focuses on Mass Effect 3?


	3. Start of a XVII-y Journey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally getting back to this.
> 
> (You may also note some authorial cynicism about corporations in a small subsection. Don't worry, it's entirely restricted to that; I try very hard to be a person who avoids soapboxing.)

"Welcome to the Velvet Room... once again."

Minoru wasn't expecting this, but wasn't especially surprised, really. In fact, this was almost a bit of a relief; he had been shifted forward centuries in the future, he would have expected Igor to offer his view at some point. And now, two years later, there he was.

What _was_ surprising was the old limo. Namely, that it wasn't anymore.

"How interesting," Igor said, looking out the window - or rather, the viewport onto a purplish-blue planet covered in thick clouds. Or possibly a great sea. "It is most unusual for the Room to change its form when not provoked by the presence of other Wild Cards. But then, you are in most unusual circumstances, are you not?"

"Unusually _jerkish,_ I might add!" Oh, Marie was here too. "You could have at least _told me_ you were going to freeze yourself! Do you know how many rainstorms I made fretting!?"

"Sorry," Minoru said, embarrassed despite himself. "I had no idea how long."

"Hmph! At least try to warn me next time you throw yourself into, I dunno, a black hole!" The living part of Izanami turned amateur poet turned sometime weatherwoman crossed her hands, looking... well, like Marie normally did when she was frustrated.

"You will forgive us. The interference that led you to be sealed away for quite some time caused a bit of a stir, not to mention how difficult it was to be certain you would ever be revived. But, you have taken to your new life well, as shown by the new face of the Room."

"Yeah. The starship bridge aesthetic really suits it, doesn't it?" Minoru said, looking around. "The hues and the tech really play well together."

"Indeed, though I must admit to missing the seats of its automotive incarnation," Margaret said as she settled into her own swiveling chair next to Igor. "Transport comfort for crew appears to be a lost art."

"Still too far from the ground for _me,_ " Marie grumbled.

"This is indeed a shift that we all must grow used to, just as it did for you. But the Velvet Room will last for as long humanity does - if not longer, given the presence of other minds, to define the limit between dream and reality, themselves and matter." Igor paused, before his smile shrank slightly. "But... There is a reason we did not contact you, as you surmised. Even as you rediscovered the power of Personas in the physical world."

"Yeah, I was wondering about that," Minoru said, now feeling a bit grimmer himself. "We haven't found anything of the asari that trapped us - it was kind of hard with the geth assault on the Citadel sending everything into chaos."

Both Marie and Margaret winced. "Er…" Margaret began. "... I do sincerely wish I could tell you something about that ship..."

"But it would be interference beyond acceptable levels," Igor finished, looking frustrated even with his smile. "But, I can give you guidance before your new journey begins, with another reading of the Tarot."

Minoru nodded. "It can't hurt."

"Some readings, in poor advice, may, but I will do my best to avoid errors advice." With that, Igor pulled out his deck and laid three cards before him, facedown.

"In the position of the past," he said, revealing the front had an impassive skull hanging before a pair of double doors, "We have Death, in the upright position. "It is not the end of life, but it _is_ the end of a life you knew, completely and in totality - the right path, and the only path, is to move forward and recognize this change is neither good nor bad, just great. I do not believe I need to expound upon this?"

Minoru suppressed a chuckle. "Well, we pretty much _were_ dead in the living sense for a while. So no."

"Your humor is a step on the path. It processes the change in a way you can comprehend, and to see past the confines of your own existence as you learn the rules and limits of a new one," Igor said as he flipped the center card, an eye-like lamp hanging from a bird cage. "The card representing the present is the Hermit, also upright. This represents you and your friends, as you are now; isolated from the world by both your knowledge of the universal unconsciousness and your unique shared history; this is not the world you were born to inhabit. This seclusion has not destroyed you, however; you have been given a unique opportunity to understand yourselves, and your divergent perspective allows you to easily see things that nobody that has lived their entire lives in a single age have difficulty in comprehending."

"Which is kind of a curse. The historians _never stop coming,"_ Minoru said with exasperation.

"Not what I meant, but yes, the Hermit puts trials between seekers of knowledge and himself for a reason," Igor pointed out. "But this is merely the present. And in the future..."

Almost reluctantly, he flipped over the last card.

A great building with its ornate top floor being blasted away by lightning. "The Tower," Igor said, sadly. "In the upright position."

"... Unavoidable catastrophe," Minoru said, grimly remembering his own reading from the dream where he first met Igor. "Things aren't going to go well, are they?"

"Not in the short term, no. You, and the entire world, will soon face a disaster that will change the face of the galaxy forever. The survivors will have a great chance to ensure the new face will be one pleasing to you, but I cannot guarantee, dear guest, that you will be among them. The consequence of an ancient crime will come to haunt the living, and for the hubris of those long dead everyone in this galaxy will suffer." Igor paused. "Your quest will not be to stop this cataclysm, but to assist in overcoming it. You are in a position that will help you save countless people, and ensure the end of the present world will not result in the stillbirth of the future one."

Slowly, the Velvet Room started to fade. "Be brave, young guest. And through it all, know that the Velvet Room will be always there to help you. You will need it."

* * *

"... Senpai, maybe next time you can warn me before you tell me about big-nose's predictions?" Teddie said, plaintively. "I'm already beary nervous about our big debut as space heroes. I really don't want to think about 'unavoidable catastrophe' right now!"

"Sorry, you're just the only one who knows what I'm talking about," Minoru said with an apologetic smile. "On the bright side, you'll come to it beautifully."

"... Yeah. Yeah, I will!" Teddy beamed, before posing. "I can't believe I didn't think of bearsic training before! Now I'm cute _and_ hunky!" 

And indeed, two years had been kind to Teddie. He had really taken the idea of being eventually being allies of starfaring heroes seriously, and had spent much of his time in a punishing gym regimen (the "bearsic training" bit was because he managed to talk Yosuke into helping him chase down an ex-Alliance military trainer for the closest experience he could have to actual basic training, sans enlistment). As a result, his human body had gone from its bishonen state to... a different breed of bishonen, to be honest. A far more muscular variety, certainly; the Shadow-turned-young man had developed an extremely respectable set of pecs and finely toned arms, which he proudly displayed under tight clothing, but he hadn't lost his more androgynous looks. He just wore his hair long, causing him to look distinctly more surfer-esque with a tan he had developed (or possibly sprayed on).

Minoru, for his part, actually felt a little self-conscious; his appearance seemed frozen in time, albeit slightly broader and in the more sleek suits that passed for casual wear on space stations. Still, he felt secure in one way. "... I don't think the geth care about human ideas of hunky when engaging kill protocols."

"Aw, you haven't seen me smolder them yet!" To emphasize his point, Teddie made his best "sexy" face. "This'll melt the heart of any lady robot!"

"Ted, buddy, please. Nobody cares about the smolder," a certain brown-haired man in an extremely high-end suit and with a prominent earpiece said as he departed his own shuttle, a pair of suitcases in hand. "But I'm digressing. What's up, partner?"

"Yosuke!" Minoru high-fived his oldest friend as Yosuke strode over, his body language visibly changing from that of a professional young hot-shot to the relaxed teen he used to be. "How's the Junes family being unruly today?"

"Oh, you know, the usual. Patronizing, trying to reclaim their old stock, still understandably-" Suddenly, his earpiece started flashing blue, as a name came up on his omni-too. "Wait. 'scuse me gotta-what?" Yosuke's face turned exasperated. "She wants to- Oh god, when will that woman _ever_ stop with her 'ideas'!? Look, get T'Gori on the line, I'm in the middle of personal business right now. Yes, Sakamoto, that one. Really? Thank you!" With a sigh of relief, Yosuke turned off the earpiece. "Sorry, the leader of the 'kill Yosuke' faction probably has shark DNA in her somewhere, the moment she smells _anything_ resembling weakness, well..." He made a cutting motion across his throat.

As it turns out, Yosuke qualified for a lot more than board membership. As the literally oldest living employee of Junes, due to a loophole in a legal agreement meant more to prevent asari corporate raiders from tearing the conglomerate apart, Yosuke was, legally speaking, the direct legal heir to full ownership of the megacorporation. To his eternal credit, upon realizing this he promptly signed off most of his power and direct responsibilities to the people actually in charge, but kept the fact he would be a likely candidate for CEO someday, or at least President of Marketing. This pleased exactly zero stockholders, especially those who were already peeved about having to cater to a pre-college graduate from over a century and a half ago. Due to Yosuke having abdicated most responsibilities, and fully admitting that particular clause was dumb, said stockholders had fractured into factions who felt he was learning just fine and didn't mind letting him draw a significant inheritance from it, and those who found his continuing existence a blemish on the company. Yosuke had learned to fend off their legal attacks and scheming _very quickly._ It helped he had an asari lawyer on the line, Zeera T'Gori, a matron who specialized in the tangled web of asari inheritance laws to begin with, and it was she who ended up being a mentor of sorts while he crammed through business school.

Didn't mean he didn't appreciate a vacation though, even if it was the IT's first real mission ("Finally! People who just want to kill me!"). Especially since he hadn't been able to meet his friends in person for two years.

"Don't worry Yosuke! If I see any people with dorsal fins and constantly growing teeth, I'll be sure to get out my claws!" At least some things, Minoru realized, simply did not change, up to and including Teddie's inability to detect metaphors.

A polite cough sounded from behind the group, revealing the presence of a taller woman in a red business dress. "Sorry for skipping introductions but - ugh, you'd think a century and a half would result in less vultures! Maybe we should trade tips sometime, or get them fighting each other. White-collar crook fight!"

The woman in a C-Sec uniform and helmet beside her rolled her eyes. "I'm... honestly trying to imagine how that would work that _wouldn't_ involve a lot of money leaving a lot of innocent people's hands. But where are our manners - it's been _way_ too long, guys!"

Yukiko and Chie hadn't been idle. Yukiko's plan to revive the Amagi Inn business had promptly run into a massive problem, in that no hotel owner wanted the competition and everyone in the resort business promptly closed ranks - right up until Yosuke had an idea to turn getting back into the business for a publicity stunt for Junes. Said competitors found the idea of becoming the villains in a very public story where the protagonist was a sad orphan of time, _especially_ one where Junes was backing her, to be an ever worse plan and stumbled over themselves to hand her a fairly luxurious property in space that was still well-maintained. In retrospect, Yukiko suspected that, given the unique challenges in running a space hotel, they hoped she would fizzle out - but Yukiko knew full well that she didn't have the experience and ended up hiring a corps of consultants who were old hats at the space resort business, she focusing on guest comfort and service. Her celebrity helped with the initial marketing, but pretty soon her Port Amagi was getting rave reviews for its combination of homeliness and convenience for the space-bound who generally used space hotels as a stopping place on long journeys or when waiting for someone. Last Minoru had heard, they were considering buying up a new property on Earth.

Chie, for her part, hadn't deviated from her job prospects much. C-Sec wanted the same talents that police forces of centuries past did, and were eager to accept one of the defrosted for the PR. Of course, that didn't change that Chie was still centuries out of practice with tech, but as it turned out, you didn't need much tech for nonlethal disabling or suspect pursuit. Which she excelled at, even more so once people realized the hand-eye coordination she needed for martial arts made her an excellent shot as well. She had only recently been accepted as a full officer, but going from her descriptions her instructors had high hopes for her, as soon as she got a working knowledge of how to use the majority of vital apps in an omni-tool. (Naoto, there, was a huge help).

Yosuke clapped both of his friends on the back. "Hey! How's Citadel life treating you two?"

"Cramped," Yukiko admitted. "There's only so much space in space, ironically. But it's hardly worse than most cities. Cleaner air, too."

"Yeah, it's kind of a shift," Chie said, shrugging. "Still, nobody up here bats an eye at, well, us, so that's a big plus!"

"... Hang on, wasn't Chie-chan joining Earth cops?" Teddie began, confused.

"She _was,_ but then it turns out I really needed to live in space if I wanted to run a space hotel. Less costly that way," Yukiko said with a shrug and a smile. "She decided to sign up with Naoto instead, keep me company." 

"Aww, that's so sweet!" Teddie said with a smile. "The more things change, the more they remain the same. Just look at you!"

"Not quite. I'm taller," Chie said with a bit of a blush. "And she's... developed."

Teddie, thankfully, had grown a bit to develop enough tact to realize this was something he needed to drop. "Got it. So, where's everybody-"

"Ya got two." 

"Indeed. Traffic has been incredibly congested today, I am not surprised the others are late."

Kanji, too, seemed to be a person stuck in time. He wore glasses and a small goatee now, but Minoru suspected those weren't prescription lenses. Reading glasses, at most, probably some way of not intimidating his customers. Naoto seemed to be more changed than she actually was at first glance. It was the uniform, really - because C-Sec did not care about gender either way, nor did the people of the Citadel, Naoto felt safe with a less androgynous look. Still a very modest one, but her new coat didn't cover up all trace of her femininity. She kept the hat rather than don a helmet, though; some things just weren't negotiable. 

Kanji, after having put down his stuff, walked over, giving the others high fives before inspecting Yosuke's suit. "How's the New Eden linen agreeing with you?"

"Like I'm wearing a cloud," Yosuke said, hugging his suit. "Which is a real relief, because the normal nylon crud they use in these things _chafe."_

"Great, just don' wash it in a normal machine. It'll shrink."

Meanwhile, Chie had come up to Naoto, being a bit more casual due to Naoto being someone she met with, at the least, every week or so. "Hey Nao. How's the IFF hack coming along? Eclipse is really ramping up the drone smuggling, and I'm not happy about being shot at all day by mechs."

"In a day," Naoto said as she inspected her own omni-tool, and a unique window for her "projects" (all legal, actually - C-Sec knew perfectly well the best way to counter robots and hostile systems was with malware, albeit one under a laundry list of warnings against personal use) popped up. "All the compatibility issues with the standard omni-tool programs seem to have been worked out on virtual machines, so all I need is a real-world test; Ilin is currently occupied with a professional bot-fighting championship, but he should be open for use of his dummies later today."

"... I understood absolutely none of the lingo, but okay!" Chie smiled. "Fear me, oh LOKIs! The dragon needs not to touch you to take your wisdom!"

Yukiko suppressed a snort. "Yes, fear Thorina, lady of martial haxx!"

"I hate to be bearer of interruptions here," Teddie said with a frown. "But uh, shouldn't Rise-chan and Ayane-chan be here by now? I know they had stuff at Dilinaga for its grand re-opening, but normally they're the first ones who show up."

"Don't be. Traffic's just _that bad_ in the Tayseri Ward," Kanji said with a wince. "Apparently the keepers decided they weren't fans of a major bypass and put a giant stinkin' warehouse in the middle of it. Pretty much everyone's lost now; I think you could walk on the skycars if ya wanted to hop buildings quickly right now."

Yosuke blinked. "Uh, can't skycars, I dunno, move _above_ the traffic?"

"If they're authorized to leave the lanes, yes. Most civilian skycars can't leave, because most civilians aren't pilots, and for their safety, they're bound to the lane," Naoto rattled off. "We only got here relatively on time because I was able to call in a favor from traffic control for a temporary three dimension authorization to get to a better lane - even my patience has limits."

"Don't I know," Yukiko said with a shiver. "Taxis have more leeway, but only the really expensive ones usually hire trained pilots, which means, well, the skies are not that free."

Thankfully, the traffic wasn't so bad it ate an hour. Soon, a taxi that seemed to radiate a feeling of relief parked into port, and opened to release none other than Rise. "Again, _thank you._ I'm sorry you had to go through all that."

"No problem, miss," the voice of the turian driver said in an "I am so done with today" tone. 

"I swear, I'm going to put your name in one of my concerts, you deserve a raise - hey, senpai!" The singer tried to bounce out, but winced from her legs spasming. "...wish I could be enthused, but I rode with my luggage in the back seat, like a huge, skinflint dummy. It's cramped!"

"Nothin' makes me appreciate the concept of walkin' more than today," Kanji said as he and Chie helped her up. "How's the comeback coming, by the way?"

"Well, apparently I'm popular among _volus,_ of all people. Not sure if I should feel proud of a fanbase of people who sing through rebreathers. But it's definitely helping!" Rise brushed a loose hair. "Still weird not having my pigtails. But things are looking up, humans really like the call-back to pre-Citadel Age pop too!"

Yosuke smiled, then frowned. "Hang on, weren't you with-"

"I _was,_ but she and I thought it would be cheaper to go in separate taxis for our bags." She rubbed her thigh. "Never doing that again. In fact she should be arriving right..."

There was a hum of a settling taxi.

"Now."

There were three things the Investigation Team noted about the person exiting the taxi.

"Hey there! Come here beary often, good...looking?"

One, Teddie had apparently not noticed the fact Rise had singled out the taxi.

"Um... Hi Teddie. Well, this is embarrassing..."

Two, not everyone was immediately recognizable two years from defrosting, also that nobody apparently had a video phone.

"...Partner," Yosuke whispered to Minoru, "Next time you get a vision of the future, focus on ways to avoid your friends getting frozen and not the genetic time bomb of hot to date."

Third, some cosmic force apparently felt Ayane was owed for the years she spent as an apparent middle schooler. With interest.

She was still _short,_ mind; there was only so far one could grow from that starting point. Just shorter than average, however. For everything else however... well. Her face had lost some of its roundness, for one, having become a delicate heart shape framed by longer hair. Her body had apparently absorbed the roundness from her face, going from her previous stick-like build to a more hourglass shape, still delicate but hardly slight. The perpetual child had become a woman, and one who could probably find work as a model if her musical career somehow fizzled out.

Matured in all areas of her body, it should be noted. 

Chie blinked, mouthing _are you kidding me_ to Yukiko, who sadly noticed this and promptly started trying to keep a straight face.

Minoru whistled. "... wow. Ayane, my compliments to your stylist. You look great."

"Yeah. I knew it was a blind audition, but I figured that someone with my old rags would kind of get some specific personal notes from the registrar. Still kind of blew my budget, so uh..." She blushed. "Can I have a small loan, Bumper? I know you just got past... whatever the bar exam is called now, but a paralegal's salary is still way above a musician's, and-"

"Ayane, we've been over this," Minoru began with an amused smirk. "It's not a loan, it's me supporting my girlfriend."

"Yes, but it still feels wrong to ask for money I spent on _clothes,_ even if it was for a job, and-"

"Wait, ya blew a budget on _clothes!?"_ Kanji looked genuinely aghast. "Hey, you've got a permanent discount at my place-"

"It didn't seem right, leveraging my friendship with you-"

"You can have all the fulcrums ya want! I ain't lettin' you be price-gouged for something I can do in my sleep! Here, take my card, I have a free hour on Thursday...."

And for the next hour, up to that first, critical briefing, it was like they had only been separated for two and a half minutes rather than years.

The future felt like home.

* * *

What didn't feel like home was the secluded area of the spaceport. It wasn't exactly one meant for public use; more like it was deliberately sealed off. The place the Alliance rep led them to even had a "foyer" of sorts, a checkpoint for a routine scan for any listening devices.

Rise, after about a minute sitting in the dark, coughed. "Um, did salarians design this spaceport? Seems kinda... specific, to doing things secretly."

A chorus of "I dunnos" came from everyone, apart from the Alliance guard who led them in, who rose an eyebrow but said nothing.

It was after that moment that the lights dimmed before a hologram switched on in front, resolving into the image of a mildly scarred, heavily wrinkled white man in an admiral's uniform. "Greetings, and welcome to your first briefing. I apologize for the wait, there was a bit of paperwork that I needed to finish. My name is Admiral Steven Hackett; I'll be your handler for this mission."

Minoru rose his hand. "Hackett? Aren't you the commander of the Arcturus Fleet?"

A look of pleasant surprise came to Hackett's face. "You've done your research! Correct, I am the officer in charge of the Fifth Fleet, aka the Arcturus Fleet. Normally you would be briefed by someone lower on the hierarchy, but your powers and your service to the Alliance military is strictly classified; I'm one of the few people who know it, and have the authorization to issue you missions."

Yosuke rose his hand. "Hey do you know Commander Shep-"

"Yes," Hackett said as he rolled his eyes, obviously expecting this. "No, you cannot meet him unless it becomes necessary for a mission. It's nothing personal, it's just that he's a Spectre, and most of his duties are not directly related to what we have in mind."

"Ah," Yosuke said, looking about as disappointed as Teddie, Chie, and Rise.

"That out of the way," Hackett said, returning to his professional expression, "I would like once again, to thank you for your service to the alliance, and to congratulate you on your authorization for a personal ship. While I am given to understand Mr. Hanamura paid for the _Inaba_ out of pocket," to which Yosuke nodded, "the Alliance has spared no expense in finding a crew for it. Rest assured, you will not have to pay them yourselves."

There was a brief chuckle from everyone (and one sigh of relief).

"But I digress," Hackett said, pulling up a hologram. "For your inaugural mission, I am sending you to capture this batarian: Farem Brac'cab, leader of the Nephews of Khi'ann cult."

The batarian in question had seen better days, by the looks of it. His yellow skin had become greyed and heavily scarred, his lower left eye looked covered by a cataract, and a long scar almost bisected his nose diagonally.

"For the record," Hackett said, apparently noticing the horrified glance at Farem's mutilated face, "Most of those injuries are those he sustained in willing meditative ordeals as part of his duties as a monk. It's part of batarian henotheism, you're supposed to undergo trials of faith when being promoted in the hierarchy of their religions - as a priest of Khi'ann, the goddess of funerals and ending wars, Brac'cab's faith demands he put himself in extremely dangerous situations to show that he is not afraid of death. This is the most recent photo of him, though - the eye is new, and given how important eyes are to batarians, it's taken as a sign of mental instability he hasn't at least replaced it with a glass one."

"Lemme guess," Rise said, looking thoughtful. "He's spearheading a _completely_ unsupported by the Hierarchy attack on human space."

"Oddly enough, he _isn't,"_ Hackett said as he pulled up a picture of a gloomy looking compound. "In fact, as far as we can tell, he and his followers would rather not deal with humans at all; he's hiding in the Terminus, far away from human space."

"... I see," Naoto said, furrowing her brow. "While I can suppose from the descriptor of his sect as a 'cult' that he has inspired unhealthy behaviors, I am supposing that there is something more at work here."

"Correct. For one thing, Farem was, for lack of a better term, an archbishop in the Khi'ann temple for a decade of Earth time or so; previously, he was regarded as an exemplary member of the batarian priesthood, albeit controversial for his support of 'indenture' plans - which is to say, a way for slaves to become citizens."

Everyone sat up at the mention of the flagrant violation of batarian reputation.

"He isn't quite an abolitionist, but he's about as sympathetic to the cause you can get without running afoul of Hegemony sedition laws," Hackett continued. "Or at least he was, up until about a year ago, when he went into a week-long meditation; this is considered normal, if strenuous, for a Khi'anni priest to do before giving political advice and major announcements, but he came out in what appeared to be - well, a nervous breakdown."

To demonstrate, Hackett revealed a video of a batarian newscast, this one of a less greyed Farem with his cataract-covered eye still black, but bleeding and apparently fighting a pair of very confused looking guards.

" _The sea! The black sea is coming!" ,_ he was screaming at everyone nearby. _"I have seen its tendrils, reaching towards us, reaching towards the world - look away, I had to look away, I-"_

"The Hegemony didn't let much more of that rant broadcast," Hackett said at the sudden cut. "It was even worse in their news; suffice to say the black sea is basic batarian eschatology; mentioning the black sea probably gave the Hegemons all they needed to paint him as a politically harmless lunatic whose ideals of liberation are not worth mentioning."

"Ah," Naoto said, looking grim. "Propaganda broadcast."

"Made even more effective by the fact that this isn't quite lying. He actually did have a total and unseen meltdown, they just didn't broadcast why he was smuggled out," Hackett said, switching to a batarian newspaper reporting on a 'subversive escape' in big, intimidating font. "Those guards are actually sworn the the Khi'ann temple, and deeply respected him along with a great deal of the local populace. Whatever the rest of the message was, they pooled enough credits together to bribe the authorities into smuggling out his writings on whatever it is he experienced during his breakdown. We are supposing that it was persuasive, as about half of the temple rose up in a rebellion, broke him free from minimum security, and accepted a massive debt from the Blue Suns to evacuate them into the Terminus and to a spare outpost the Suns have had trouble staffing after Shepard disrupted much of their company structure, giving themselves that title as what we presume is a reference to Dha'zah, the god of, for lack of a better term, holding defensive lines. Regardless of gender, but I suppose 'Niblings of Khi'ann' sounds just as awkward in Khar'emi."

A brief chuckle arose from the Investigation Team, before Minoru spoke up. "So, they're creepy but otherwise inoffensive survivalists with some masochistic practices. I'm guessing there's something odd in that compound - or what caused their leader to have his, ahem, episode."

"Presumably," Hackett said as he changed views to another video. "However, a mole the turians placed in the Blue Suns reported something very interesting recently, when the Nephews stopped trying to work off their debt - from what he says, they went on a strike when they refused to help smuggle sentient cargo, instead killing a few members and letting the trafficked people join their commune, the only time they've ever converted anyone. Needless to say, the Suns were not pleased, especially with their reputation already suffering, and decided to retake their old base, preferably with as many casualties as possible to restore their face. What actually happened, was that an armed paramilitary detachment, sent to quell a commune who only had what armament they plundered from the transport, ended up routing them utterly and more or less has terrified the entire company into leaving them alone for the time being. His headcam captured why."

Said headcam was shaky and low-quality, but the audio came over perfectly well.

 _"-the fuck you mean, 'kinetic barriers'!?",_ a human Blue Sun in front of who was presumably the mole's field of view yelled into a communicator. _"These death cultists think fucking mechs are the swamp devil, you really think that-what? Shooting back-shooting back!? I'm sorry, idiot, I wasn't aware that we had-Renard!? Renard!? ... Fuck."_ The Sun got up, growling. _"Maximus, you're with me. Useless grunts are apparently-"_

 _"Commander Harvey!"_ Exactly when the shirtless batarian in an ornate, orange-red chamois and skirt with falling meteors decorated on it lovingly had shown up was unknown, as Maximus' helmet cam had whipped to an entrance to the right while he was only a few feet away, twirling a pair of large knives in his hands. _"The Augur told me of-"_

Apparently not one for pre-battle trash talk, Harvey hurled a grenade at the cultist, which exploded into a bright fireball-

That was promptly surrounded by a vortex of a rather familiar blue flame that came out of the chamois, compressing it into a single point before it flew into the batarian. A minor stab wound on his shoulder closed, scabbed over, and faded to a mild scar in seconds. About a quarter of the chamois lost its luster, becoming ash-grey, but then again, it really didn't need to have infinite charge.

 _"... That was a fine meal,"_ the cultist said as he broke into a smug smile. _"I think I'll take the rest from your corpse."_

Harvey responded to this with a scream of terror as both he and Maximus opened heavy fire on the batarian, only for the bullets to sink into a card-shaped shield in the air, curve around, and be spat right back at the would-be attackers as the swordsman broke into a run. One of the rebounding bullets hit the headcam, knocking Maximus back with a surprised shout. As the resolution was mercifully lost, Harvey howled in pain in response to a wet _splurtch_ sound.

(Everyone, including Hackett, winced at that.)

The next coherent shot was that of a turian hand quickly putting the helmet back on before Maximus charged at the batarian, omni-tool unfolding into a blade, only for the cultist to draw a _taser,_ of all things,from his skirt and shock him.

 _"Master Brac'cab also told me of you, Maximus Corvannis",_ the cultist said as cleaned his blades. _"Tell your masters - all of them - that this is Khi'anni ground, sacred in purpose, and we will defend it to the last. For this, you will be spared, and join us against the black sea. You may wish you had a choice,"_ he finished with a bitter tone, before running back out to join the fray before the mole recovered.

"The Alliance suspects that was an attempt to avoid compromising his cover, but the Blue Suns figured it out; Corvannis was the only survivor in combat fatigues who had been captured by the Nephews, they were already paranoid and tried to kill him in the belief he was part of some other 'witch-cult'", Hackett said as the playback ended. "Thankfully, they weren't expecting him to be part of the Hirearchy, who were able to extract him in mostly one piece, along with his helmet cam."

Yukiko, who had been watching the horror show for horrible people with rapt attention, broke out of her stupor. "Absorbs fire. Reflects bullets. Those are support spells."

"And that was definitely the kind of equipment we used in the TV World," Yosuke agreed. "His boss is a Persona user who buffed and kitted everyone before the fight."

"We don't have any reports of Brac'cab manifesting a Persona, but yes, the Persona corps immediately recognized the kind of phenomenon associated with the Universal Unconscious. Seeing as how the cult is relatively unarmed and seems to depend on Persona magic for defense, we figured this was an ideal proving ground for you, especially given how you are the most equipped to understand how he made that chamois. Your mission is to retrieve him before his unstable personality injures his followers, himself, or provokes an international incident with the batarians. Is this acceptable?"  
  
Not one hand stayed down.

* * *

"... That is not a civilian craft," Naoto said, simply. "You bought a military craft."

"Believe it or not, it _is."_ Yosuke smirked. "Just the one with the 'anti-pirate' suite."

"So, that would explain the turrets?"

"Yep! This model is the perfect vessel for brief excursions into the Terminus! ... According to the brochure."

Minoru tilted his head. "There's a brochure for starships?"

Yosuke paused. "... More like a directory. But yeah, apparently there's enough rich people to make personal models a business."

The newly-christened _Inaba_ was not an especially large ship, altogether. Enough room to move around in, but it was definitely a ship not meant to transport armies around. It was about twice the size of a corvette, one of the ten-man survey ships, with a sleek hull, possibly deliberately designed to resemble the venerable Normandy SR1. A set of menacing-looking guns faced forward and aft, probably more for psychological effect on said pirates than effectiveness; a ship that looked too menacing for being a safe prize was one less dogfight the ship had to deal with. 

Around its docking port, a group of people in Alliance clothing were running inspections and painting over the Junes logo.

Seeing that, something occurred to Yukiko.

"Um, if you don't mind my asking... have you ever flown this ship before? Or paid anyone to do it?"

"Eh..." Yosuke scratched his head. "I... inda thought we were going to be tapped earlier, so... it's been gathering dust for about a year and a half."

"... So. You don't have a crew," Chie said, flatly.

"Ahem."

All turned to the to the cough, a somewhat sour-looking pale man in an Alliance uniform. "That won't be a problem. Even if he had a private crew, we would request that they stay behind and use Alliance personnel instead. This is strictly classified as a matter. I'm Captain Basil Alvin, by the by. I'll be the head of your transport."

He didn't exactly sound enthused about the matter, though he at least attempted to smile politely. 

"... Er," Yosuke began, uncertain. "You feeling alright, man?"

"I..." Alvin paused, then let the smile fall. "Permission to speak honestly, sir?"

"Dude, I'm not your boss. I'm just the guy who bought the ship, you only answer to me if it's not a ship by the end of this."

"All right then..." The Captain groaned. "To be honest, sirs, as you may be able to tell, I am not pleased with this assignment. It isn't your fault, there are dozens of other poor assignments I would have received; but please, try to remained uninvolved in the direct running of the ship? I don't need you lot to tell me how to do a job I've spent fifteen years at."

The IT let that sit for a moment.

"... Bad day?" Ayane asked, awkwardly.

"More like a bad two months. But thank you for your concern," Alvin said, evenly.

There was a bit of a long pause. "So!" Minoru began, affecting cheer. "I assume that you aren't the whole crew, at least?"

"No. In fact, we have a pilot on loan from another government," Alvin said, sounding just as happy about the matter as his assignment.

"Really?" Rise said. "From where?"

"In an inquisitive tone suggesting patience is running out: Captain Alvin, can I have a word, please?"

... Rise did not just hear that.

The Captian rubbed his eyes, sighing as he turned around to the lumbering figure knuckle-walking out from behind an outcropping. "What is it now, Xekahn?"

"Annoyed: This ship is not built for VI navigation interfaces at all." The elcor motioned with his head, causing a large omnitool display to manifest before his face. "Exasperated humor: Unless you want this ship to think up is down, I require your authorization for a patch."

"Granted." Alvin hit something on his own omnitool. "Is there any particular reason you needed to interrupt me?"

The elcor turned to the Investigation Team. Somehow, everyone felt that the giant was _smirking_ at them. "Innocently: Timing." And with that, he lumbered back to the ship.

It would be incredibly inaccurate to say you could hear a pin drop, as there was plenty of activity around the Team. But not untrue.

"... That..." Rise blinked. "That was the engineer."

"If he was, he wouldn't have had the opportunity to harangue us with that particular issue." Alvin swung his arm in the direction of the slowly retreating elcor. "Xekahn Mudoono, currently assigned pilot on loan from the Courts of Dekuuna, and amateur comedian."

A few seconds later, the sheer absurdity of the situation hit, and Yukiko started to howl with laughter.

"... Er." Alvin blinked. "Is that... normal?"

"For her?" Chie shrugged. "Yes."

* * *

"Thank the place we are currently in for civilian regulations," Yosuke said as he flopped down on his bunk. "I've gotten really used to leg room."

"I believe this bunk is larger than the one in our apartment," Naoto said as she inspected her and Kanji's own. "I would complain about economy of wasted space, except I enjoy the blood flow to my legs. So I will let it slide."

"A perfect place to rest my stuffing after a long day of space adventuring!" Teddie spun on a chair. "Grumpy captains aside, of course!"

"I'm more concerned about the pilot, to be honest," Rise said, looking pensive. "I mean, I'm sure he's got the reaction time that's the peak of his race, but, um..." She trailed off, blushing.

"Rise, it's okay to say he's an elcor," Yukiko said, with a slight wince. "You're not hiding anything."

She sighed. "Okay, yes, I'm a little concerned we're being flown around by a member of a species that is what happens when you make tortoises sentient and very deadpan. I mean, we're going to the Terminus! Isn't the Alliance concerned about, say, pirates? In _fast_ ships?"

"I would suppose that is why he was complaining about VI compatibility issues," Naoto said, thinking. "Standard elcor tactics is to direct VIs to help supplement their own reaction time; the programs react directly while the elcor directs tactics."

"And if they glitch?" Rise asked, only slightly mollified.

"Then we have bigger issues than _Xekahn_ being a sitting duck," Chie said. "VIs are some of the most redundantly protected systems in a ship, because they run the things a human can't get to easily. If they're offline, the ship isn't going anywhere to begin with."

Yosuke cocked his head. "... No offense meant, but, uh, since when did you know computer systems."

Almost instantly, the young accidental executive felt very glad looks could not kill. "... You do realize that space piracy is something every C-Sec officer studies?"

"... Actually, no I didn't," Yosuke said, red-faced. "I'll, uh, keep that in mind."

"Really, this is kind of exciting for me," Ayane said, laying out her practice trombone in a convenient spot. "I get to be a part of the adventure!"

"Yeah, I'm just hopin' that this ain't worse than the murder cases. Adachi was freakin' creepy..." Kanji shivered.

"Oh, admit it, Kanji-senpai!" Teddie smiled. "You couldn't bear to have left this behind you entirely!"

"... Yeah, all right," Kanji said with a rueful smile. "Off to stop a cult, all together again - almost like old times!"

"Yeah," Minoru said, finally speaking up. "Just like old times."

Nobody heard the uncertainty in his voice about said old times involving the Tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Behold, the elcor in the AO3 tags has arrived!


	4. The Apprehensive Prophet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the road again... on the schedule again...

"Casually: Now arriving at Kra'zana 4, land of things so inconsequential it lacks a proper planet name. Please mind the non-native wildlife, they will preach at you. And possibly shoot you."

Besides the rotating gallery of omni-tool holograms surrounding Xekahn, Captain Alvin rose an eyebrow. "... You do realize we are attacking an armed militia, with the ability to reroute our own bullets at us?"

Xekahn paused. "Mild contrition: Correct. I forgot that this was this ship's inaugural mission. I will try to be serious."

"While I appreciate you, Cap, this isn't exactly our first rodeo," Yosuke said with a proud smile. "Believe me, we've faced way, way crazier monsters than a bunch of paranoid cultists."

"Not ones who are sentient beings," Alvin said as he turned towards the Investigation Team. "These are not the 'Shadows' you have perviously encountered. From the sound of things, Shadows are more akin to wild and hostile animals than sentient beings. Even if they do communicate with you at all, they are obviously otherworldly and fundamentally hostile in nature. More importantly, when defeated they dissolve or are forced back into human form. Do not underestimate the psychological strain being exposed to a corpse can have on you."

"Well, more than one reason to carry nonlethal weapons," Minoru said as he lifted what appeared to be one of his swords, but on closer look was simply very hard - and blunt - plastic with a series of circuits on them. "These guys aren't evil, just scared; we just need to bring them in for deprogramming and get their leader some much-needed mental help."

"If he's receptive at all," Naoto said as she double checked her guns. "Bra'cab has been surrounded by people who repeat his doctrine and rely on him for emotional validation. Given his existing emotional instability, I wouldn't be surprised if he's developed narcissistic delusions, in particular a savior complex."

"Still doesn't mean he and his guys aren't refugees," Chie said as she strapped on a pair of very unique boots. "I consider this a service, they're out of the Terminus and off of Kar'shan. They deserve a chance at a better life than those hellholes."

"If they're accepted," Rise said from her station, launching a group of scouting drones before summoning Kouzeon. "Take it from someone who has experience on _both_ sides of that."

Xekahn's holo-windows briefly collected into a single cloud before dissipating back into a swarm.

"... Which is a problem," Yukiko said as she examined her weapons; a pair of metallic fans. "These are, well, a bit sharp to not cut." To demonstrate, she whistled at Teddie, who threw a tennis ball at her - a quick flash of the fans, and thanks to the miracle of monomolecular technology, three pieces fell to the floor.

Kanji whistled. "Okay, that? That is both cool and... yeah, I'm seein' the problem."

"Thankfully, the Alliance saw to that," Alvin cut in, still sounding professionally detached. "If you fold the fans, you'll enable kinetic-activated shockers on the sides, not unlike Satonaka's."

Curious, Yukiko checked the sides, revealing a series of blue circuits not unlike the ones on Chie's boots. "... Objection withdrawn. My compliments, you even made them match!"

"Command thought that was a nice touch," Alvin said. "Though... I mean no offense, but I am wondering why Matsunaga is in armor? She doesn't have combat experience."

"You'd be right, but I've been practicing with a gun, I know how tranquilizer rounds work," she said as she looked over a drone. "I'm planning on not being the load someday, so I've been studying combat engineering."

"... Though, no training?" Alvin rose his eyebrow skeptically.

"Good point, cap! Don't worry, the bear's way ahead of you!" Teddie saluted, smiling in what he supposed was an "enthusiastic rookie" way. "My personal trainer is ex-Alliance military, and I got Yosuke to pay for Ayane-chan's lessons too! She's been in the most accurate bearsic training we could do!"

The holo-windows converged again. "Confused and flatly: Bearsic?"

"Welcome to Teddie," Kanji replied, groaning. "He makes these puns."

The holo-windows remained converged while Xekahn thought on this. “Trying not to laugh: So you’re the comedian of the ship and fond of bears, huh?” There was a long pause. “Laughing at own joke: Then tell me, have you ever been to Dekuuma?”

The expression on Teddie's face was the face of a man who had just witnessed something spiritual.

"... Er.." Alvin's professional demeanor evaporated in the face of confusion. "Is there any particular reasoning behind that-"

"In Japanese," Rise began, muffled through the hand on her face. "'Kuma' means 'bear.'"

"Oh." Alvin's expression morphed into one generally associated with eating pickled lemon rings. "... Xekahn, as your captain, you are forbidden from ever using that caliber of pun on this bridge again. And while I do appreciate your attempts at carrying your own weight, you have no real combat experience. It is not prejudicial, Matsunaga, it's just that there is literally no way you have experienced the battlefield or have developed the training for it. Please remain in the rearguard to develop a better sense of a live environment."

"I'm not actually offended, I was planning on sending drones after the baddies and setting up turrets," Ayane said with a shrug.

"Excellent. From scans," Alvin said as he brought up a map of the compound, "we can see the Nephews have a relatively unguarded area to the south; the shuttle will land there and we will feed you intel from the ship. From the guard patrols, it should be relatively easy to ambush the first line and open a way to the compound after neutralizing patrols. Be warned, however, we will not be able to map the interior until you are on the inside, the compound has some basic shielding that prevents purely orbital scans; we request you have into the security mainframe at the earliest opportunity."

Minoru nodded. "Take out patrols, sneak in, hack security, find Farem. Easy enough objectives."

"Ruefully: It's finding the method that's the issue. Professional tone: Will be in shuttle range in ten minutes..."

* * *

"You know," Yosuke said as he exited the shuttle. "I wasn't expecting the wastelands occupied by a doomsday cult to be so... Floral."

Kra'zana 4, as it turns out, had no small amount of colorful plant species. Most of them were not flowers, really; more like a rainbow field of grass and bushes. The predominant color was green, of course. Light around a yellow sun still worked the same way. But there was no shortage of reds, blues, and and purples, speckled in like calculated splatters of paint. 

"... Maybe to batarians, this is really foreboding," Yukiko said, inspecting a multicolored bush. "Four eyes might make this place really disorienting to look at."

"I've done some research, actually," Naoto said as she looked at her omni-tool. "The Khi'anni branch of the batarian religion actually feels the more an area is covered in colorful plants, the more pleased the goddess is, because the bodies that feed the plants have remained undisturbed by violence or disrespect."

There was a very long pause as everyone realized what the Nephews saw a flora-covered prairie as.

"So..." Chie looked a little queasy as she checked the undergrowth for bones. "It _is_ foreboding? Maybe?"

"I honestly think the 'peaceful' part is more important," Naoto said, walking out without a care in the world for the idea of being in a graveyard the size of a planet (apparently it was only the dead and kicking that upset her). "Batarian henotheism has always had a morbid bent, and it only got worse after the Hegemony became the fascistic rogue state it is today, but it's more akin to the Mexican Day of the Dead; to batarians, being among ancestors is comforting."

"Yeah, I'm just worried about those ancestors being, um, active in the defense of the baddies," Teddie said, a little paled. "I don't think I should have watched _Assault of the Ghost Rachni_ on the flight over..."

 _"I'll, um, tell you if I detect the motion of four-eyed zombies coming out of the ground,"_ Rise's telepathic voice echoed. _"You're in the clear right now, though I'm detecting a slight pressure about four klicks to the north; I think that's where Farem's placed some of his enchanted honor guard."_

 _"... Scans corroborate that,"_ Captain Alvin chimed in, sounding a bit distracted. _"Er... does that hurt, when she does that?"_

"I've been right where you are right now, Captain," Ayane said with a sympathetic look. "It's a bit... alarming, the first time you see a Persona."

 _"Ah. I digress. Back to the mission, scanners say there are four lifesigns belonging to unknown entities the size of humanoids ahead of you. Could be the native fauna, but given the, er..."_ There was a sound of an omni-tool being activated. _"... Pronounced how it's spelled.. Thumosic signature of an active Persona spell, I assume that is a patrol."_

Kanji blinked. "Uh..."

_"Mild bemusement: What the proper term is for things relating to the Persona, apparently. Continuing bemusement: Because scientists need one for everything."_

"... I'm not sure what's worse; that it exists or I have enough expertise in Greek to think that sounds fitting." Minoru turned to the others. "Right. This is the first time we're facing an organized group of _people,_ here, team. Not Shadows. People. They're smart, tactical, but most importantly, they have lives of their own. Their only crime was fleeing with a man having a breakdown and being swept up in some apocalyptic fervor. We are here to disarm them, and him, not hurt them. Use nonlethal spells like Dormina, or Marin Karin. Damaging spells are largely to remove any shields they have or if they prove resistant, if possible ambush and stun with melee attacks."

"Roger that, partner," Yosuke said as he hoisted his knives. "Mission start!"

* * *

"I'm going to take a wild guess here," Kanji said as his shield folded up. "Farem's ain't exactly the best guard trainer in the world."

The groaning trio of batarians on the ground barely reacted to Naoto putting a zip tie on their hands and feet, while Yukiko tried to coax the terrified, birdlike creature cowering behind a large rock to her.

It wasn't quite an incompetent patrol. Two of the batarians had the ceremonial clothing that the enchanted cultists seemed to have, the third heavily equipped with Blue Suns arms and armor. The Nephews definitely had the right idea with what a patrol should be, and as Alvin pointed out, were conserving their supply of Suns gear perfectly well ( _"Unless that cloth needs to, oh, be treated with tears from a dead god or somesuch to be enchanted, textiles can be made by the cult and are far cheaper; there's simply more material for enchanted guards than mundanely equipped ones"_ ). The thing was, though, that the patrol didn't seem to be that interested in patrolling; when scouted, the armored one had been feeding the creature something from a large food bag.

(It did, however, pretty much guarantee he and his two comrades would survive though. Rise made that very clear.)

The enchanted guards had the falling stars design on their skirts, but apparently the green and purple chamois did not indicate a resistance to Dormina, knocking out the both of them in under a minute. The armored guard was a little harder; as it turns out, he seemed to be naturally wakeful, shaking off the misty magic to unleash a full barrage of shots from his machine gun.

In every direction, as Minoru had been hiding behind a very large and covering rock. While the guard was busy filling the air with holes, Kanji took the opportunity to charge in behind both his riot shield and kinetic barrier. Going by the untranslated phrase, the guard had just enough time to notice before a very strong blow to the head left him open for a stun baton from his attacker.

 _"Well, I think they're expecting Blue Suns,"_ Rise commented. _"Actual Persona-users apart from their boss are probably a huge shock. According to Alvin, depending on what those, we're calling them guard-scarfs for now, represent, that could be an excellent defense against conventional weapons."_

 _"Search the armored guard,"_ said Captain chimed in. _"I suspect that the only reason he wouldn't have a communicator is if the Nephews lack them altogether. Also, be on guard the compound going on passive alert if there's a check-in call they're missing."_

"Loud and clear, Captain!" Teddie walked over, looking over the pockets of the closer enchanted guard to him. "Hm, this guy's got nothing, just some rations. Looks like... Well, the discount version of those Single Meal Packets the trainer likes, mostly."

_"Mild disbelief: He eats those things? Willingly? Return to neutral matter-of-fact: But I digress. If they're at all like the product they're ripping off, those are really easy to cook even without a fire source. Favored for long wilderness expeditions."_

Minoru's brow furrowed as he thought about this. "... They're not _that_ far from home. Why do they have the long-term rations?"

_"... Actually, I remember a similar situation I faced in... well, I believe it may still be classified, so I can't name names. Point is, I do recognize that when crops fail, the first thing you see is dipping into otherwise precious reserves of preservatives."_ Alvin paused. _"Check our armored guard's nose crests."_

Chie got there first, cracking open the batarian's visor.

Even to someone completely unfamiliar with batarian physiology, the guard had obviously seen better days. He had the same unhealthy coloration of his boss, and his nose appeared somewhat riven with pockmarks and scars. 

_"Ah. Thought as such."_ Alvin sounded grim. _"Brittle crests are a sign of long-term nutritional deficiencies in batarians; its their version of scurvy. This man hasn't had access to a healthy meal in at least a month, and I doubt the plants here would agree with him; he'd be keeping the lion's share of that bag for himself otherwise, eating that's a way to stave off hunger and little more."_

_"Analytical: It would not be surprising if the Suns are enforcing a blockade. They may be scared, but they are not dumb; if they starve their enemy, then they can weaken the compound."_

"So, basically, that food was meant for this guy," Yukiko said as the creature nervously came forward to said food.

"Yuki, we sure that thing's healthy?" Chie said, looking concerned. "It could have, I dunno, space rabies."

"Chie, I don't think that it would be acting like this if it was sick, or that I can be infected with whatever it may have," Yukiko pointed out. "... You think we have space? It's acting like someone's pet, kinda."

Chie opened her mouth, then paused. "I... I'll think about it. We have a tagging system, right?"

Alvin sighed over the intercoms. _"You do realize there are regulations-"_

 _"Wait,"_ Rise cut in. _"... Something doesn't make sense."_

_"Surprised curiosity: Oh?"_

_"These guys are doomsday preppers, right?"_ One could almost feel Rise tapping her chin. _"Even if they, I dunno, had pirate contacts shipping them food, their entire goal is to be self-sufficient for when doom comes."_

_"... Tone of agreement and concentration: She raises a good point, Captain. Wouldn't they have brought a supply of crops to grow here with them for the End of Days? Even if they thought it was going to be soon, they know the Hegemony doesn't support them. At all. Certainly not with a hot meal."_

_"... I request a secondary objective be added to the mission,"_ Alvin said, sounding perturbed. _"I am not ruling out a natural disaster, but on the other hand, this may imply an unseen element."_

"Orders received." Minoru turned back to the rest. "Ayane, Naoto? You getting anything that sounds like Farem calling in a checkup?"

"Negative." Naoto looked up from her omni-tool. "There's some odd static though. Given how we are dealing with a Persona-user, I'm not ruling that out being a side effect of unique powers of his."

 _"I'll keep you posted,"_ Rise said, sounding much less gung-ho than she had a bit ago.

* * *

The compound itself looked even more gloomy in real life, a large portion of the prairie's life torn out and made barren by old earth mover vehicle tracks; it was clear whoever built it didn't especially care about the native life or the comfort of those in it. The one new addition was that, here and ther, Blue Suns sigils were painted over with lettering in the batarian language and two symbols of a white, irregular island against a black sea were painted on for every Blue Sun. 

"It appears someone is proud of their graphics designer," Yukiko said as she inspected one of the Nephews' symbols through her binoculars. "However I must say, whatever brand they use runs terribly."

"Yeah. Really not making me feel confident in your rationality when your flag looks like that melty clock picture," Chie agreed. "So. We ready?"

A chorus of agreements came over the radio.

"Okay." Yukiko's Persona card materialized. "A one, and a two, and-"

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Agidyne aimed at the ground made a big noise. Not very much damage though, just more of a large _bang._ Certainly enough to draw out guards without the whole staff being mobilized. And guards were drawn out through a small personnel door, mostly enchanted ones with two armored.

Right into the firing art of the tranq turrets Ayane had set up after Naoto had put a virus in the lone pair of cameras watching the area, disguising the approach of the Team with a loop of the same five seconds.

The star-patterned enchanted guards quickly sent the darts back at the turrets, but obviously being machines, this had no reaction apart from a rapid series of _plink_ sounds. As theorized by Minoru, the enchantment wore off quickly under the assault, the designs fading before a series of _zzaps_ indicated the shirtless and otherwise unprotected guards falling over.

After taking a second to register this, both guards suddenly screamed _"Kax!"_ at the top of their lungs (untranslated - apparently they had the normal reaction to their buddies being filled with darts out of nowhere), and one turned to run back in - only to be blown against the wall by a Garu spell, courtesy of Yosuke. It only dazed her for a couple seconds - which was enough for Chie to freeze the door shut.

Her partner dove behind a barrier, keeping herself a small target for the arms fire she was sure was coming.

She wasn't expecting a muscular blonde man to come charging at her, trusting in the kinetic barriers to last long enough to be in Persona range. And being right.

"BEARSONA!" The guard had just enough time to realize that yes, that was an anthropomorphic rainbow-faced missile coming at her-

One Gigantic Fist later, the guard was a dazed heap skidding towards the wall, and the would-be raiser of the alarm was given a face full of stun claws. "Sorry about hurting you ladies, but believe me, it's better than dying of scurvy! There's a reason pirates are healthy eaters today!"

Alvin whistled. _"I would like to offer my apologies for doubting your abilities as tacticians. That was an impressive plan. It probably would not have worked on trained soldiers, but for people without established protocols, it's definitely an effective mind game."_

 _"Yeah,"_ Rise agreed, sounding proud. _"Shadows may be wild animals, but they aren't stupid. They can work as packs, so we had to learn how to play on their weaknesses fast."_

"It helps these guys are probably a little overconfident after the Blue Suns retreated," Yosuke said as he zip-tied the unconscious enchanted guards. "I don't think they've realized how much of that is mercs being huge bullies, which is to say, big chickens." He paused. "And given how many of them are turians, wow, that came out wrong."

Yukiko chuckled. "I feel bad for finding that funny. Anyway, the door's probably still unlocked, and maybe one of these people have a map-"

 _"Don't move!"_ Rise suddenly interrupted. _"I just sensed something."_

Everyone paled a bit. "... Dammit," Kanji growled. "Knew this was gettin' too easy..."

"Right," Minoru said, bringing up the plan on his omni-tool. "We have to assume that was a Persona scan, so Farem probably knows we're here and is mobilizing to defensive positions. Good news is, he'll probably evacuate the lay members to safe areas, so we have to worry about them less-"

_"Politely with an undertone of confusion: I hate to interrupt, but... We just got hailed."_

Alvin growled. _"Let me guess; Blue Suns found their courage, finally, and are telling us to get away from their territory."_

_"Confused: No, from the compound. It's a request to establish a voice chat with the team attacking the base."_

There was about five seconds of nothing but radio static. _"... Patch it through."_

A brief crescendo of static and-

 _"You... You have the second soul,"_ The reedy, hoarse voice said, echoing with wonder. _"I never thought... What did you see when you looked inside, I wonder...?"_

"You're talking to the Investigation Team of Inaba," Naoto began, professionally. "I am Inspector Naoto Shirogane recently of C-Sec. Who am I speaking to?"

 _"Oh. Oh yes. I am Prelate Bra'cab. Forgive my rudeness. Honored by your presence, even as rivals."_ Somehow, that phrase came out sounding completely sincere. Then, he thought of something. _"... What happened to my men?",_ he said with an undertone of dread.

"They're alive. We are using a minimum of lethal techniques, and as far as I know all of them are fine, merely unconscious," Naoto continued. 

_"Oh thank the heavens,"_ Farem said with obvious relief. 

So Farem was either genuinely concerned about his followers as people or the best actor Khar'shan ever produced. Naoto banked on the former. "We don't want to hurt you. But in a full battle, we can't guarantee an accident won't happen. If you tell your flock to lower their guns, we can negotiate-"

 _"No, no, I can tell what you're offering. No, we can't leave."_ Farem's voice turned hollow. _"This is safe ground. If I go with you, the sea will find us. Drown us in its thoughts."_

"You can't _stay_ here, Prelate," Naoto continued. "We saw the condition of your guard. Batarians can't live off this world's flora, not for long."

A bitter laugh. _"I know. But length isn't exactly a problem. The sea is already coming, almost here. I don't have a full-born second soul, but I know enough to help the ones I could breathe. We can last for a year with the right rationing."_

"Prelate," Naoto began with the sinking feeling Farem was a genuine fanatic, albeit a relatively compassionate one. "This isn't-"

Ayane cleared her throat. "Naoto? Can I?"

The detective's brow furrowed. "Matsunaga, you aren't a trained negotiator-"

 _"I heard your friend. I don't sense her other half,"_ Farem suddenly interrupted. _"Put her on."_

Naoto winced. "Prelate, she is not the leader-"

_"I know. But she is in the most danger. Can't shut out the sea like we can, I have to warn her. Tell her how to breathe, before she grows scales."_

Naoto looked up, looking a little lost.

 _Can't hurt,_ Minoru silently texted her. _We'll go in while he's distracted._

"All right, but I'm going to be listening, and mediating." Naoto said. "Is this acceptable?"

 _"More than acceptable. You need to hear about the sea too. What I saw. About..._ them. _"_

* * *

While it was kind of two-faced to sneak in while simultaneously negotiating with someone who ostensibly trusting them, it did have an effect; few guards were patrolling the sterile corridors as the ship team hacked into the facility and mapped it out.

"Okay, um, do you prefer Prelate, or Brac'cab?", Ayane said.

 _"Brac'cab is fine. Keeps me grounded, keeps me aware of who I was. Khi'ann knows I need it,"_ Farem muttered. _"I found air, but I can still hear the waters. I'm never sure if it's my own mind playing tricks, or something left of them."_

 _I'm in,_ Xekahn texted to Naoto. _Keep him going, from the net activity I think his computer techs are paying more attention to him talking than the map._

"Okay." Ayane inhaled, considering her next words carefully. "From the sound of it, something really bad happened to you, and I don't blame you for trying to protect people. I appreciate you trying to help me too."

 _"I have to. More people, better. Maybe something will be left over,"_ Farem muttered. _"Chose this place_ because _it's a backwater where batarians can't easily live."_

Ayane's brow furrowed. "... I think what you're saying is the sea wouldn't look for you here?"

_"Yes, yes, had to work. Only thing I could do, and they are so, so close now. Hide here, so I can see them before they see me..."_

As Farem kept talking, the Investigation team quietly crept into the cramped, spartan bunker. To be frank, it didn't seem much like a cult compound, more like a somewhat cramped military outpost. There weren't creepy shrines everywhere, there wasn't pictures of Farem in various poses, there _was_ a large body rack but with a panic-release button in easy reach of the "captive" - really, the only religious paraphernalia was a couple discarded copies of transcripts of the Pillars of Strength, likely dropped by scrambling guards.

_"I'm like your friends. Almost. Khi'ann temple tells you to know all of yourself. Including the dark spirits."_

"By that," Naoto interjected. "You mean a personal Shadow? An alternate personality formed from psychological traits you reflexively deny exist?"

_"Personal Shadow... is that what you call it? Yes, that is what we call your Shadows - every creature has four spirits in its soul, working in harmony. The dark is the subconscious and denied. Those with the proper potential, proper beliefs, can meet it, ask it to find form. Source of magic - you know this, why am I explaining."_

"I don't mind you talking more about it," Ayane said, gently. "Go on."

_"My dark spirit, taught it to speak, I listen. It isn't a full soul, not yet. May never be. But I know how to guide it through ritual. Make my Blessed Ones, though it takes hours to enchant their gear. Learned to ride it into space."_

"... That's why your temple advises the Hegemony, isn't it?" Ayane said. "You know what's happening off Khar'shan. You've seen it."

 _"Perceptive. Good. That's good."_ Farem paused, thinking carefully. _"Truth is, was planning to take temple and run for a while. Why I could hide. Then... Bahak."_

Naoto's eyes widened. "You mean the Alpha Relay Disaster?"

_"Not disaster. Sabotage. By Tyrone Shepard."_

Of course, a couple of his fans happened to be listening to the negotiation. _"... Are you kidding me?"_ Rise asked, disbelief and anger obvious. _"Do you seriously expect me to-"_

"Kujikawa, enough!" Naoto hissed into the uplink. "This is between the three of us, not you."

 _"It is fine,"_ Farem said, much to Naoto's belief. _"I was also shocked. But, not as shocked. Because I was there, spirit form. I saw Shepard, escaping into space, talking to..._ **It."**

The horse tone had _changed_ at that last word. Previously, his tone came off as being weak, unable to speak above a loud whisper. Now it sounded deliberate. Planned. Terrified.

Ayane wiped away a nervous sweat. "... What is, um, It?"

 _"Hologram. Yellow. Like a corpse left out in the sun. Showing a... I want to say 'machine', but_ **It** _was a machine in that a person is a plant. Something metal, but_ more. _Majestic, terrible, a god in steel flesh. But my dark spirit saw it too - and it could see beyond, into_ **It.** _It was... Loud. So, so loud. A nation in a single voice, all singing one will, them but not theirs._ **It** _hated Shepard, viewed him as obstacle, wanted him to open the door and let it claim this galaxy - and spoke as_ **We**. _I couldn't speak, couldn't think, but I saw. I told Hegemony, they listened - and then lied about it. They said Shepard destroyed relay to hurt them, and them alone!"_

The Investigation Team took Farem's ranting to move a bit closer to the command bunker, not especially eager to see what would happen if he panicked in the key of firing wildly.

 _"I told them about the hologram. Said Shepard faked it. I told them I was there in astral form. They say Shepard knew I was there. I told them he doesn't even know dark spirit exists! They tell me there must be spies!"_ Another laugh, hysterical. _"Spies! Behold, the greatest species in the world, deciding they'd rather be incompetent than praise the Great Enemy! I wanted to run, but batarians can't run with me. Have to protect batarians somehow, only one man. So I needed more proof. Follow where_ **It** _was speaking from._ _"_

 _We've tapped into camera feeds,_ Alvin texted the Team. _He's getting hysterical, guards are getting nervous. Grabbing his arm so strong it's drawing blood._

 _"Took months. Many favors, so much salvage. Found something in signals, out of the space between galaxies. Followed it, took three days of doing nothing but float in the black, in the dark. Found proof._ _"_ The hysterical laugh came again, louder, desperate. _"So foolish._ **It** _was_ **Them.** _"_

 _"Thousands! Hundreds of thousands! Almost a million metal gods, all staring, all_ singing! _Almost a million nations, each with a billion voices, all singing! All_ screaming! _And... they saw. They saw_ **me."**

The priest was actively hyperventilating now. _"Red, blue, green. Red like dying suns, blue like liquid eezo, green like a choked sea. That's all I saw, when they_ sang _at me. But it wasn't a song. It was a_ teaching. _A song with a will, a_ demand _to be sung! And it was_ my _voice, singing it! I_ wanted _to sing it! Lyrics like veins, notes like cells, a chorus like a gnashing maw! I felt such joy, to sing it!"_ He inhaled, obviously trying to calm himself down. _"But then... my dark spirit spoke. And I stopped singing. Long enough to know what I was singing about. And I screamed to silence the melody. Pierced the eye of my talking spirit, so I couldn't hear it as clear."_

He paused. _"Maybe... Maybe I should have sung. Because the scream... Another_ **It** _heard it. And_ **It** _was intrigued. My dark spirit was a fascination. So, very, fascinated..."_ A long pause. _"I don't want to talk anymore."_

Ayane inhaled, thinking. "I'm sorry."

Farem let out a breath and an affirmative noise, nosily sipping a drink over the intercom. _"So that's why I can't leave. They are coming, and they are the black sea. And if I could only stop singing because my spirit spoke... what of those who are mute? I'm training my followers. Teaching them to listen to themselves, so when the black sea comes, they know what thoughts are its waves. We have a ship; we can flee when the initial chaos dies down."_

"... While I understand you are very frightened right now, this isn't a tenable situation." Naoto said, breathing a sigh of relief he hadn't ordered his cult to attack in his paranoid rant. "The Blue Suns will regroup eventually, and they'll blame you for the loss of this outpost. Your entire community will be killed out of spite."

 _"Better death then the sea,"_ Farem said, bleakly. _"If we are doomed to die, we can die as us."_

Grimacing, Naoto signaled to the other Team members, who took up position next to the command room.

Ayane blanched. "Um, while I get that you're scared, isn't that, uh... A bit extreme?" 

_"It is. Which is why I'm asking you to leave. Tell everyone you can, do whatever meditations allowed your team's dark spirits to speak. I don't want to fight you, but to protect my followers, I may have to."_

_We can't do that,_ Alvin texted, as if that needed to be obvious. _It'll fail the mission, and the Suns may discover we were here. The price the Hegemony would pay for knowing the Alliance had friendly contact with a political dissident would likely erase any scruples they had._

 _So, we have stun gas, right?_ Chie texted. _We can probably hit him through the vents._

 _I've checked. No easy access,_ Xekahn texted. _Whatever you do will likely involve shooting._

 _Dammit,_ Rise added. _From what I can scan, there's civilians in the panic room in the command center, so at least you can't hit them._

 _Wait,_ Ayane texted. _Authorization to try something? Too long to explain, I think I can convince him there's a safer option._

There was a bit of a pause before Minoru texted affirmation, along with Alvin (though he added _One chance. Attack on my order_ ).

"... Brac'cab, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't think this is a good sanctuary."

There was a bit of a pause. _"... Explain."_

"I mean, you said it yourself. The song makes you sing it. Only people with Person-I mean, who can listen to the dark spirit can tell what's happening to them. But, Brac'cab.... you're not the only one in this system."

Farem was struck silent for a minute. _"... No,"_ he said, quietly.

"Unfortunately, yes," Naoto said, catching on. "The first thing your sea may do is conscript local forces to use as cat's-paws. Standard occupying force procedure. The Blue Suns are a likely candidate, being isolated and expected to be insular; if they are flipped, nobody will notice for a while, allowing infiltration. One of the things they are liable to do is tell them about you."

_"No, no, no, nononono..."_

"Then, when your sea discovers you've been trying to form a refugee camp or even a resistance of sorts - how do you think they'll react?" Ayane let that hang in the air for a bit. "In the Terminus, you've done nothing but make the Nephews alone and isolated."

Farem _screamed,_ shattering something on his end of the line before collapsing into a sob.

 _"... What have I done?"_ he said after a few minutes of crying. _"I can't..."_

"... Brac'cab, it's okay. I'm offering you a better deal," Ayane began, gently. "There's plenty of worlds in Alliance space to hide on. Plenty of backwaters. And we can set you up with the proper food, we have the resources," she said with a glance at Yosuke, who shrugged.

Farem paused, considering this. _"... Do you plan to arrest me? Return me to the Hegemony?"_

"You, maybe. The rest of your followers will be fine," Naoto said, letting out the tension. "Given your circumstances, it is very likely you and the Nephews will be granted asylum rights should you apply. Even if the Hegemony knew about it, there's not a thing they can do about it."

Farem inhaled. _"... Everyone, lower your weapons. Stand down."_

* * *

"Well," Alvin said as he looked at the collection of somewhat unhealthy batarians board their ramshackle ship. "I must admit, I am quite impressed. You have some natural talent as a negotiator, even if you require some instruction on what the Alliance can and cannot easily grant. No casualties, we solved a mystery, and now have a major insight into the Hegemony's secret Persona-related projects. That went about as well as it possibly could have, even if we do need to figure out an asylum deal."

"In all fairness, I had it on easy mode. He wasn't taking hostages," Ayane said with a shrug. "He was trying to warn me - I think he just wanted a friend, wanted to protect his... I guess cult isn't the proper term, he wasn't exactly trying to dominate them. Compound, I guess?"

"Still, that wasn't a healthy situation," Alvin said as Farem waited for a crewman of the _Inaba_ to pat him down. "The man is obviously paranoid and traumatized, whatever happened to him. It was liable to provoke fractures in the Nephews and gradually becoming a cult if he became suspicious of that 'song' he was rambling about."

"Yyyeah, about that..." Yosuke said, shivering. "You don't think he met another Izanami, did you? Or... Shepard did, I guess? Um, what're some deity figures in batarian culture, I need to know what we're expecting."

"The possibility is hardly remote," Naoto said, deep in thought. "But, what I'm puzzled about is the Commander..."

Alvin's brow furrowed. "I wouldn't know. Hackett would, but N7 business, let alone Spectre operations, are beyond my pay grade, and were even before I got burned by politics. Hackett may know, ask him during the debrief."

"And get told it's strictly need to know?" Yukiko said with a raised eyebrow.

Alvin grunted, making a "kinda" gesture with his hand. "I estimate about a 60% chance of giving you the no-need business. If it falls, that's probably not a good sign."

"Still, that was a beary good first showing!" Teddie said with a bounce. "We saved a bunch of people from scurvy, and we didn't even need to fight that much! Score one for space heroes!"

"Contrary: Space heroes who met the one paranoid survivalist in the universe who doesn't think he can out-shoot a military operation and had other issues," Xekahn said, lumbering over. "Flatly: Though, I do understand cult leaders are known for humility and the ability to listen to other perspectives."

"... Touche," Teddie said, blushing. "But still, go us! ... Though, where's Sensei?"

"Apparently a couple of the Nephews found out he has multiple Personas," Rise said. "They want to know how."

"Can't blame 'em," Kanji said with a shrug. "Would've been useful to not have to put all that silk on if they needed anythin' resembling armor even if Farem just could immunize against fire. Good thing we saved it too, lot of it looks handmade."

"Yeah," Chie said, looking... a bit nervous.

"... Chie-chan?", Teddie said, noticing this. "Is something bothering you?"

"Yeah, um, it might be nothing." Chie paused. "Assuming Farem is actually crazy, in spite of him being halfway to having actual supernatural powers, so, um, not all that likely, but it might be - I'm hoping it might be-"

"Chie!" Yukiko interrupted. "Breathe."

"... Yeah, um, right." Chie glanced at the Nephew's ship, slowly filling up in preparation for the rendezvous with the asylum agents. "Um, that thing hated Shepard, right? Tyrone, the first human Spectre? And that thing, it wants to conquer the galaxy, right?"

"... yeaaaah?" Yosuke said, a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"Um, if it's going to take over everything, and Shepard's a threat - who's to say it won't try to get at him through his home planet?"

There was a very long pause at that.

"... Shirogane?", a very pale Captain Alvin said.

"Yes?"

"You know enough about psychology. Did anything Brac'cab say suggest he's delusional?"

"No. His reactions are in line with PTSD, which suggests any delusions are flashbacks to real events, or at worst distortions of real events."

"Ah. That's what I feared."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always did wonder what happened to the survivors of cosmic horror stories who got out... Here's an answer.


	5. Ship of Ghouls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we get to the meat of the fic. If you want to get the sense of ambience for the ship exploration, load up Metroid Fusion's soundtrack and play Environmental Tension.

"Well," Admiral Hackett said, as his hologram put a final signature on his paperwork. "I must admit, I am impressed. Alliance Intelligence is going to be rather annoyed, but they run defector protections all the time. This is just a larger job than normal, and the sheer value of Brac'cab's debrief for insight into Hegemony internal politics is probably more than enough to mollify them. You were profoundly fortunate, given the circumstances, but you capitalized on that in ways I would expect from a professional operation."

"Aww, thanks, Admiral!" Teddie said, blushing. "All in a day's work for space heroes!"

"Before we celebrate, it was nothing too difficult," Naoto interjected, still professional. "While we are mostly civilians, we have had a great deal of experience in fighting Shadows. We've learned a great deal about tactics from our excursions into the Midnight Channel." She paused. "Though admittedly the Prelate being open to reason was a surprise. Matsunaga proved extremely helpful in calming him and opened a line of dialogue I didn't think of. So, not a bad first mission for her either."

Ayane beamed, proud of herself.

"While I don't mean to spoil your cheer," Hackett said, in a more serious tone. "Authorize the appearance of a new team member with the commanding officer, in advance. Nothing went badly, so this isn't even an unofficial warning, but a recommendation. We have a process for these things."

Yosuke shrugged. "Hey, no harm, no foul. So for everything else, everything's good?"

The Admiral smiled. "Indeed. This has been an excellent first mission, and I look forward to the next-"

Suddenly, a red window appeared next to Hackett's hologram, which seemed to shock him just as much as it did the Investigation Team and the attending crew of the _Inaba._

After a second, Hackett's professionalism returned, but not his relative cheer. "Pardon me, this window indicates something is extremely high priority. And need-to-know. Hold a minute," he said, clicking something before his image was replaced by an orange window of the Alliance Navy logo emblazoned above HOLDING CALL.

Xekahn stared at the window, slowly blinking. "Surprised and with undercurrent of worry: That was rather sudden."

"I sincerely wish I could say you're exaggerating," Captain Alvin murmured back, joining his pilot in staring at the placeholder hologram, apparently trying to will it into explaining itself.

"... Maybe his spouse is calling in about a house flood...?" Yukiko tried to give a disarming smile. 

"I appreciate the humor attempt, but Idon't think that regulations allow personal calls when he's own duty..." Chie said, deep in thought. "This is the kind of thing that shows up during emergency briefings.."

Right on cue, the placeholder turned back into a normal image, with a grave-looking Admiral Hackett. "It pains me to ask you this, so soon after the end of last mission, but... would you mind taking on a new mission? I am sincerely hoping it isn't critical."

* * *

"G-g-ghost ships!?" Chie's eyes shrank to pinpoints.

"In the sense of being oddly undamaged derelicts with no obvious life signs, yes," Hackett replied, showing a picture of two cruisers that seemed of a distinctly human design. "They actually aren't that rare, generally they're what happens when a ship stalls in the middle of space and can't radio assistance for whatever reason; most of the latter aren't that mysterious, usually the crew had no emergency beacon when their ship became inoperative and, well, starved to death. The ones that don't have histories of being pirates, and the crew chose not to risk being discovered by authorities over repairing their vessel. But as one can imagine," he said as he pointed to the Systems Alliance logo on the side of one of the cruisers, "We are skeptical of _that_ being the case."

"As a background, we've been aware of these two, the _Utukku_ and the _Azag_ for a while," Hackett continued, changing the view to a starmap. "They were originally lost six years apart. The _Utukku_ has a known fate; her kinetic barriers were overwhelmed by an undetected cloud of micrometeors and her crew had to escape to the nearest habitable planet. They intended to return for her, but she was never found; until she reappeared, we assumed that pirates found and stole her, or that she crashed on a nearby planet and we missed her. The _Azag_ was more alarming; during a survey of the Perseus Veil, they reported a strange mass effect signal before she suddenly lost all contact with Alliance. We assumed that she accidentally provoked the geth, and they blew her up, but ever since she reappeared we've been wondering if they had something to do with the fact both reappeared within two hours of each other within the same system."

"Uh, question?" Kanji began. "I get why that's creepy an' all, but why aren't you sendin' the normal army after it? What does it have to do with us?"

"That is a good point. Truth is, under normal circumstances, we _would_ have sent in a normal salvage team and reclaimed the hulks, and we did. A month ago, when they reappeared."

The picture shifted to the two ghost ships and a smaller cruiser attempting to get close.

Attempting, because of the sudden cloud that had suddenly appeared between the crewed ship and the derelicts. A very familiar cloud to one Minoru Sakamoto.

"Fog!?" 

"Precisely. Probes launched in detected vaporized water, completely normal for condensed mist, except that it was mist condensed at a normal 2.5 degrees at normal density in space, and it only appeared as we were nearing it. The salvagers became nervous and confused, and radioed command; command remembered your stories about the TV World and sent the Unconscious-Related Incidents Unit to take some readings." Hackett showed a very active graph. "As suspected, it's alight with thumosic signatures, which is to say, this mist has something to do with the Universal Unconsciousness. We don't know if it's related to the Inaba murders or not, but no one was especially eager to go in blind. So, we studied the anomaly from a safe distance until we felt safe enough to touch it, when, well..."

Another picture. "The ships started moving towards the mass relay."

Even if it weren't for the background, it'd still be creepy. No lights were on in either ship, apart from the blue glow of engines. More pertinently, the fog bank was covering both of them, and from the video, moving along with the ghost ships, a fitting veil for the apparently haunted derelicts.

"... Well," Yosuke began. "That's not terrifying. That's not terrifying at all. I'm guessing the ships are doing that all life-free?"

"Correct. There still isn't any life on board either ship. As far as we know, it might be piloted by actual ghosts."

Chie made a sound like a kitten being strangled and tried to hide behind Yukiko, who naturally was suppressing a snigger at how hard the ghost ships were trying.

"I suppose," Minoru said, brow furrowed, "You want us to explore them."

"Advanced scouting, yes, explore no. There's a contingent from the URIU en route. Trouble is, they seem to have waited until the observers were about two hours out, and you can be in there in about twenty minutes. We suspect it may be being flown by Shadows, and even if not, this is still a force distinctly related to Personas; we want you to get in, take inventory of the opposing force if there is any, and get out. Minimal combat, hopefully, but in reality I doubt that'll be the case."

Naoto gave the slightest incline she could that could be called a nod. "Scouting. Haunted ships. A-Affirmative."

Hackett nodded in sympathy. "I would say it's just a scouting mission, but in this situation? Better to err on the side of jinxes existing."

* * *

"We are approaching the derelicts," Captain Alvin said, voice steady. "I am not exactly planning to discover what the effect that mist has on the _Inaba,_ so I'm going to go within five clicks of the fog; the shuttles should be able to reach the rest of the way and dock on the _Azag_ , due to ease of access _."_

"Nervous joking: All sacrifices aboard the food boat," Xekahn said, cautiously edging closer to the carriers.

They weren't moving _especially_ fast, to be honest. More of a directed drift. But that was only relative to other ships, causing the area outside the mixed mass effect field to distort and making the environment even more eerie.

Yukiko peered at the wavy, somewhat redshifted field of stars. "... Oh, that's how they did it!"

Rise turned her chair her chair to face Yukiko, blinking as Kouzeon flickered from momentary distraction. "Uh?"

"About a week after we woke up, the hospital had a modern interpretation of _Dreams in the Witch House_ and I was wondering how they did this given how bad the CGI was-"

"Yuki, please!" Chie said, gripping her rifle in a death grip. "Please, don't mention anything vaguely Lovecraft adjacent when we're _going on a haunted ship!"_

Yukiko laughed. "Really? I think it's a lovely change of pace from the Citadel. Think of it as a nostalgia trip back to the TV World - oh, I wonder if there'll be ghost graffiti, like-"

"Are there any Shadows you can detect on board?", Naoto said, a bit loudly.

"None yet," Rise said. "But I am detecting something... Off, about the engine room. Not sure what it is, it's kind of _like_ a Shadow, but... broken up by static? It's kind of like that weird trick Adachi did in his dungeon."

"... Wait, wasn't that an infinite space loop?" Yosuke groaned. "Yeah, sorry Chie, we're dealing with freaking _non-Euclidean geometry_ here, the Cthulhu references are coming."

Chie whimpered and rechecked her boots.

"... That aside," Alvin said, tapping his sleeve nervously, "The anomaly is the focus of this mission; get in there, take a picture of it, and get out. Unless you encounter whatever force is driving these ships, in which case the full force will have a good idea of what to expect anyway, then you can get out early."

"Assumin' it's not an ambush," Kanji said, darkly.

"... That is disturbingly plausible at the moment," Alvin admitted. "But I trust you can deal with it?"

"Well, I don't trust me," Ayane said sourlym as she settled into her post. "Which is why I'm staying here."

Minoru gave an apologetic smile. "Yeah, I'm not exactly bringing the sole non-Persona user on a ship surrounded by TV Fog."

"Neutral tone: Seems sensible. Authoritative: In range, get to the shuttle."

* * *

"Well," Teddie began, voice distorted through the spacesuit. "I think I know what set idea I'm going to enter into the Junes Halloween contest this year..."

Nobody had been willing to risk getting the docking bay to open, lest whatever force was now steering the shipsnotice them and demonstrate its displeasure at the intrusion. Thankfully for the mission, the _Azag_ 's damage included a large gash in its top decks. Large enough for a shuttle to slip in with some careful pilot work.

 _"Strained casualness: The incomplete split in the roof really adds to the ambience, doesn't it? Big toothy maw leading to the tomb."_ The voice of the pilot in question was a bit broken up, but appreciated. _"Cautionary: I can probably fly back through, but there's a lag when remote control is involved. If you are ambushed, you should blow that area wider, before departing."_

"Gotcha. Blast creepy maw _only_ when being attacked," Kanji said, putting the rocket launcher he bought for security down by the shuttle. "Won't make this room seem any less freaky, though."

The deck so entered, according to the standard plan of Alliance carriers, was supposed to be fuel storage for its compliment of fighters, and going by the large tanks, that's exactly what it was. Problem was that tanks generally didn't leak out frozen streamers of fuel into the world like great blackish tentacles of ice, suspended in midair due to low gravity. Nor were most fuel storages coated in thin sheets of frost and dust.

The fact there wasn't any air in the ship, and thus, no sound, didn't help.

 _"Power's been out for a while,"_ Alvin muttered. _"Items exposed to empty space don't freeze very fast. Whatever got this running obviously doesn't need that much by way of heat."_

 _"It's times like this I wish I actually talked to Mitsuru about Shadow biology,"_ Rise muttered. _"Who knows if they need air or not? Kouzeon's still not picking up anything. I think you're in the clear."_

"Okay," Minoru said, inspecting his sword. "We've got suits that create artificial gravity for us, but remember, moment something leaves our hands, it's going to start floating. Also, try to keep chatter down, the only way we're going to know an ambush is coming is if we hear the vibrations in the floor, and..." He stomped on the deck a couple times, causing a dull, easily missable "thunk" sound to reverb through his friends' suits.

"Yeah, let's be warned about the _silent monsters_ who are creeping up on us!" Chie squeaked. "Let's see how much more I can hate this!"

"Satonaka," Naoto began through clenched teeth, willing herself to be calm. "The maximum time it will take to reach the engine room, assuming it is possible at all, is an hour. We won't be here for long, possibly shorter if we do encounter opposing forces."

"Well, isn't that the most tarnished silver lining to this toxic smog cloud I've ever heard!" Yosuke said, a hitch in his voice. "This is our second mission, and I _already_ want a vacation!"

Yukiko remained silent, back to her friends.

"... Yuki, please don't start laughing," Chie said, resigned to the inevitable. "I don't think my heart can take-"

"It's not that," Yukiko said, switching on her headlamp to bright. "Take a look."

At first it seemed like just a bunch of the icy tendrils of frozen fuel, but on second glance it looked like a _lot_ of tendrils of frozen fuel. Too many to be normal. As Yukiko tilted her head up, it became clear the tendrils weren't coming from the fuel tanks, and in fact were broken off.

Broken off, and woven together, like a great tapestry of oil-slick tentacles that refracted the light in odd ways.

"Oh. Dadaist art pieces," Yosuke said, sarcasm obvious. "As if I couldn't have enough dread, we're dealing with _pretentious_ ghosts. Great. Just great."

 _"... The value and message of this... sculpture, aside,"_ Alvin said, sounding too puzzled by the helmet feed to be amused. _"Building this kind of thing would require a great deal of time and finesse. To assemble it, one would have to be able to ignore the cold, and if this room warmed, it would probably melt."_

 _"And not to mention, I don't think Shadows are ones for mosiacs,"_ Rise finished.

 _"Or getting bored, from what I heard,"_ Ayane added. _"You think it's like the Nephews' talismans? Some kind of spell battery?"_

 _"I'm not sensing anything from it. At all,"_ Rise said. _"And I've checked one of those robes, I know what an enchanted item is like."_

_"Hypothesizing: Maybe it isn't complete yet, and is waiting for enchantment. Dark addendum: Which means whatever made it is going to come back sooner or later."_

"Right," Minoru said, heading towards the door to the ship proper. "Here we go."

* * *

Minoru was not a person who was easily creeped out, but he had to admit, the near-lack of any ambient sound was starting to weigh on him. The giant, empty, unlit corridors weren't helping either.

Not that Yukiko seemed to mind, though. "You know," she said, checking the walls. "This reminds me of a story I found on the exonet. Before I go into it, do you know what the salarian version of a vampire is?"

"No," Chie squeaked. "And-"

"Well, a Sur'Zahn is a sorcerer that steals memory to lengthen their lifespan," Yukiko began, cheerfully ignorant that wasn't a request to exposit. "They destroy others' pasts to preserve their future, but they become more like dreams over time and are hurt by light-"

"While this is all very fascinating," Naoto said, teeth gritted and with the heightened pitch of someone trying very hard to not be terrified, "I think it is recommended to leave this conversation for _later,_ Amagi."

_"Mischievously: Actually, I think I've read that one. Didn't it turn out the Sur'Zahn was being hunted by a serial killer?"_

"Ahem, _spoilers,"_ an annoyed Yukiko shot back.

Chie whimpered.

 _"Serious: I'm actually here to alert you that I've cracked the ship's VI, it doesn't know I'm not a crew member. The first bit of intel is that the password to examine - Aside: Thank you, Captain - the captain's logs is actually unchanged from when the_ Azag _vanished, and they stop just before the ship dropped off the face of the universe. Expository: The first log includes some hint on what the anomaly was. Leading tone: So, either someone didn't know how to open the logs to erase evidence of their doing..."_

"Or never bothered," Minoru finished. "Whoever took this ship wasn't looking for data on the Alliance, and didn't expect the Alliance to get the ship back."

 _"We think it's the latter. The first thing you learn in combat engineer school is that passwords aren't hard to break if you have enough time and a good brute force guessing program,"_ Ayane finished. _"And any halfway competent pirate is sure to trot out the latter as soon as they have the former, you don't get anywhere by being a particularly infamous ship-jacker."_

"So, this isn't pirates, okay," Yosuke said, a bit of aggravation coming to his voice. "Is there anything we _didn't_ know or should I congratulate you on your promotion to Captain-"

 _"If you'll stop with the cheek, please, we'll tell you,"_ an irritated Alvin came on. _"The reason we were intrigued is that going by the logs, the_ Azag _actually figured out what the signal they detected was, they just didn't have time to send it off before they vanished. More specifically, the fact that the mass effect pulse we detected was actually a local mass relay having a flare. The exact description is 'possibly the largest ever seen,' the Captain was quite proud of himself for entering into a world record."_

Okay, that was new. Also: "Eezo can flare?" Kanji stopped pulling at a door. "Uh, when I look at it, it's all pretty much the same constant glowing ta me. No big flashes o' blue."

 _"Not_ visually, _Kanji,"_ Ayane corrected. _"And it was the relay itself, not the eezo. Occasionally a mass corridor they make intersects with another ship undergoing FTL, which causes a safety feature in the relay to activate; it releases a pulse of dark energy that slows the obstructing ship down enough that it exits FTL long enough for the ship it's shuttling to pass without the two fields mucking each other up. It's... honestly kind of scientific, but it's basically an automated crossing guard. Long story short, it shows up to mass effect sensors as a relay flare."_

_"Explanatory, with excitement: However, the pulse magnitude directly corresponds to the size of the ships both currently blocking the relay corridor and the ship inside the corridor. The reason they didn't realize it was a flare at first was because the level they detected was the strength associated with dreadnoughts - presumably they themselves were the blocking ship. Understated: Given how they weren't exactly small themselves, I'm sure you can imagine the size of the pulse needed to stall them."_

"That is indeed more informative," Naoto began. "Obviously the prime candidate last thing detected was... an even... larger... ship..." She trailed off, realizing _exactly_ what that implied about how the ship she was on ended up a derelict.

_"Which brings us to clue number three,"_ Rise said, finally joining in. _"I thought it was weird that they'd provoke a flare when they weren't between their relay and their partner, so I looked up the system they vanished in, and I discovered that apparently there's another primary relay there - but it's a closed one. Going by the coordinates the flare came from, that was the one that flared."_

Everyone let that hang in the air for a bit, before Chie said what they were all thinking.

"... The ghosts came in from the other relay, didn't they?"

Minoru honestly felt more exasperated than anything. "The Wild Card's life is always interesting," he said, sighing. "Okay, if this is some first contact situation, we can assume from the aggression that the new species is naturally xenophobic or otherwise untrusting-"

The ground rumbled as Kanji finally winnowed the door open, slipping from the sudden movement.

"Finally," he grumbled. "Ya think it'd be easier in low gravity but _holy shit!"_ The jump Kanji made may have been due to his suit's gravity shorting out, but likely not.

If the rest of the ship had been tension buildup to the "scare" portion of the haunted house, this room would be the payoff. Slumped against the far wall was a suited body, identity obliterated by a dark visor and bulky suit.

It really threw the scrawl on the walls into relief.

Every single wall was covered, top to bottom, in black marker, a veritable coating of characters just barely overlapping; it was possible to see where one ended and another began, but only if you looked closely. Many different languages, with occasional patterns of the same symbol.

All characters reading one thing, and on closer inspection, the non-letter symbols always had the same quantity of whatever abstract shape there was.

"... It's all... fours," Teddie said, finally.

"... Okay, I call door duty for investigation of this room!" Chie all but shrieked. "You guys go in!"

"Dude, I'm not going in rooms full of crazy scrawl on principle, let alone _this_ room." From what was visible of his face, Yosuke was acting like a particularly large Arabic 4 was going to bite him. "You guys take it."

"I'd be crowing victory about ghost graffiti," Yukiko began, subdued. "But then I saw the body. Poor man..."

_"Sympathetic: It must have been a terrible death, if he had enough time to draw that room. Hoping, praying one of those symbols would work..."_

There was a bit of a pause.

"... Uh," Kanji began. "I, uh, kind of think they did."

_"Confused: Pardon? He looks pretty dead."_

"Yeah, that's the idea," Chie said, sounding more relieved to focus on something else. "This looks more like a death threat-"

_"Confused: No?"_

There was continuing silence on the line before Rise cleared her throat. _"Xekahn, what does the number four sound like in, er, whatever the proper name for Elcorish is?"_

_"Confused but hopeful for understanding: It's a bit hard to explain, but when written down it's a near-exact match for the singular word that means 'steady ground.'"_

Every Japanese person in the group made a noise of understanding. _"And to a person on a high-gravity planet,"_ Ayane finished, _"Ground you won't slip on is a good thing, so 'four' is a lucky number."_

"Unfortunately, the Japanese language has a structure where 'four' is pronounced in a similar way to 'death'," Naoto chimed in. "I don't buy the superstition myself, but I can admit that gives the numeral an ill reputation."

 _"Understanding flatness: Oh."_ Then, after a bit. _"Slight discomfort: All right, I see your point."_

"... Though," Naoto began, frowning. "That does raise a point. I can't think of any human culture where four is a sacred number, or that writing it on the walls would possibly protect the inhabitant from suffocation. Rather this comes off as a deliberate attempt to unnerve people with a human Asiac cultural background."

 _"To be frank, that's also unbelievable to me,"_ Alvin said. _"The statistical census of the_ Azag's _crew was largely lacking in any Eastern backgrounds, so the only reason that this room would be made is..."_

His voice trailed off as Yukiko took a step inside. _"AMAGI, GET BACK!"_

The instinctive reflex hit Yukiko's body before her brain processed the order.

This probably saved her from the suit _lunging_ at her, unnaturally going from its spread-eagle rest to a tackle. 

Chie unleashed a tide of profanity as she yanked out her gun, filling the entire room with bullets with a few even glancing off the fleeing Yukiko's shields, cracking the helmet of the suit.

A soft green glow illuminated the room as the visor split open, spilling through the dark glass. Electricity sparked across the bullet holes left by Chie's assault as the suit got to its feet, apparently unhindered. It lifted a hand in front of it, giving the Investigation Team a full view of three metallic talons splitting it open from the inside, before they rammed themselves into the cracks in the dark visor and tearing off the helmet in a single fluid motion.

The revealed ambusher was _apparently_ a machine of some kind, but one that erred on the organic side of the spectrum; leathery flesh glowed with veiny circuits, the source of the green. Here and there, patches of almost crystalline feathers grew out of a birdlike face with a beak that glowed in the light. The worst was the eyes; instead of camera lenses or organic ones, a pair of solid green orbs gave the Team an emotionless stare, seemingly looking straight through them before the monster crouched into an animalistic stance, creeping forward like a climbing creature.

Not that it got far before Kanji slammed the door shut, and Minoru conjured his Persona to weld it shut with an Agidyne.

Ignoring the banging coming from the door, the Team stepped back, catching their breath.

Yosuke found his words first. _"WHAT IN THE NAME OF HELL WAS THAT!?"_

"Ghosts, ghost ships, now monsters!?" Chie trained her gun on the door. "When did my life become a horror movie!?"

"Presumably, that was a drone," Naoto said, furiously focused on being calm, "Or maybe a member of a sentient AI race, like the geth. From what I know, the geth themselves would not think of psychological warfare like... _that._ _"_

 _"I'm focusing on it right now, and - well, it's weird, it's like there_ was _a personal Shadow there at one point, but now I'm just detecting what's left!"_ Rise came in. _"Like, I dunno, something scooped it out!"_

"... Are you saying it's some kind of _zombie!?"_ Teddie's eyes doubled in width.

_"Yes! No! Maybe? I'm even more confused than you are, I mean, it could just be what an AI's secret self looks like, or it could be differing psyche or - can someone change the comm channel, that static is not helping!"_

"Static?" Minoru said, listening. "Wait, that hissing noise?"

Naoto gritted her teeth. "Jamming device! This ambush was-"

"Uh, I hate to interrupt," Yukiko began, having looked up from where she was kneeling from her sprint. "But I don't think that's the _radio..."_

Everyone looked up to a line of vents.

Specifically, the mist escaping from them, and the slowly returning ambient sound.

Before anyone could react, the thumping against the door suddenly stopped.

A second later, a loud _hhhhhrrrnnk_ sound pierced the silence, like the sea-whistle breath of a deep sea diver inhaling.

_"Professional: Life support network just powered up, breach sealed by bulkheads. And- I'm detecting life signs from that room, specifically heat."_

_"Um, along with another below deck. And another - four, wait six - twelve -_ _a_ lot _of heat signatures in cargo bay!"_ Ayane's furious typing became audible. _"I don't know - oh. Oh,_ shit."

 _"I just looked up why oxygen would cause machines to start showing life signs,"_ Ayane continued, monotone. _"Exonet guide revealed a hypothetical drone engine that would work like aerobic respiration - breathing is_ refueling _to them."_

The banging started up again, louder - and more successfully, a crack showing in the impromptu welding as a claw punched through.

A low moaning echoed through the ship. Low, _animal_ moaning.

_"Quiet suggestion: Abort mission?"_

"Abort mission," a very pale Minoru agreed.

Chie yanked Yukiko to her feet in a single motion. _"LET'S GET OUT OF HEEEEERE!"_

* * *

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the bulkheads managed to slow down the IT enough for the monsters to catch up.

That didn't stop Yosuke from cussing out the door.

"Oh please, yes, let's _seal off people from evacuation_ , that's great design! Why not line the escape pods with _spikes,_ give the crew some acupuncture while we're at it!?"

"Not the purpose of bulkheads!", Naoto shouted as she plugged her omni-tool in, furiously attacking its internal security.

"Well, they should be!", Chie said, diving behind the closest cover she could find.

Outside of the suit, the resemblance the monstrous machine and its brethren had to birds only increased. Skeletally thin upper limbs with patches of armor plates like scales attached, thick lower limbs covered in glass-like feathers, a twitchy, jerky way of moving as what appeared to be about ten crawled around the corner, clinging to the ceilings and walls.

 _"Tense: Working on it!"_ Even Xekahn's voice sounded a little higher pitched. _"Frustrated: They turned security on, and it's hard to turn off safety features anyway, because idiot-proofing only exists when you need it not to!"_

"We know, we're bearing with it, we _are still being attacked by evil robot zombies!"_ Teddie fired off a few Bufudynes, not especially caring if their obvious tolerance for empty vacuum indicated cold resistance.

To his somewhat surprise, a couple of the techno-organic robots flinched from the ice, a lining of frost covering them.

 _"Good news is,"_ Rise said, all business. _"I've been scanning them, and they're_ just _robots, not Shadows. Any spell should work on them. The_ bad _news is they don't have any particular_ weaknesses _either, and going by how they react to Bufu, I'd say they can take a lot of hits before going down."_

"Okay, that's just cheating!", Yukiko said as she unleashed her own firey magic. "If you're the basic kind of zombie or robot, you're supposed to go down with single hits, especially head shots! Remind me to write up a complaint so we can present it to the inventor later!"

Kanji snarled, running at one of the monsters to personally test how resilient they were to a melee attack-

Only for the target to start crackling with electricity. Before Kanji could react, the machine erupted in a blue field of electricity, knocking the surprised man off his feet and nearly allowing it to stab him. Thankfully Kanji's reactions weren't affected, allowing him to dodge the follow-up claw.

 _"What's happening!?"_ Alvin said, voice muffled. _"I detected a mass effect burst in the active front!"_

_"Tense: Some kind of personal taser, one of the bots unleashed a burst of it along with about 200 volts when Kanji got close. He absorbed the lightning, but his kinetic shields got shredded!"_

"Oh, so now they _electrocute_ you if you try to kick them! Great, just what we need, zombies with _area attacks!"_ Chie made do with it, Haraedo-no-Okami sweeping back the horde with a Rampage. "ETA on the bulkheads opening, please!?"

"One minute! Xekahn and I need to activate manual control first!" Naoto grimaced, seemingly trying to make her array of virus programs and scripts work better by will alone.

 _"That's about all we have!"_ Rise said. _"I'm detecting six more on your deck!"_

Thankfully for the Investigation Team, that turned out to be an overestimation - just as the reinforcements arrived, the bulkheads spat out a warning and cracked open, knocking both the machines and the people off-balance with the sudden suction of decompression - unlike the mysterious enemies, the suction was very much in the direction the IT wanted to be, and all jumped into the sudden air tunnel, which quickly closed behind them.

_"Mild relief: I've locked the system down manually, it should be about ten minutes before they open the bulkheads themselves. I recommend you take the head start."_

The Team didn't need to be told twice, dashing through the silent corridors without a word, only focus on escape. Occasionally, the glow of a machine would illuminate the corridor, presumably other ambushers turned backup guards, but in the airless decks of the _Azag,_ the machines were slow, halting, and uncoordinated; single, wordless shots got them out of the way on the two occasions they managed to block the way out.

Eventually, the Team reached their impromptu hanger and-

One of the machines, naturally, was waiting for them. A unique one.

"Holy crap!" Yosuke rose his gun. "What the hell is up with its arm!?"

The robot was even more disturbingly organic than its brethren, due to the face it appeared... diseased, somehow. A large portion of its left arm was swollen with what looked disturbingly like buboes filled with swirling blue, not helped by an odd stance that brought to mind sentient discomfort. Its blank eyes sized them up from its perch near the sculpture, giving the Team a look at strangely flecked eyes, bits of the same blue filling the blank orbs. 

There was a tense second before the machine rose its talon and brought it down.

Right onto the swelling.

A half-second as the blue glow intensified, and-

The machine was blown off its perch as its exploding arm released a torrent of ice, in what everyone there immediately recognized as a spell of the Bufu line. The magic remained in the air for a second before being absorbed by the sculpture, the fuel glowing as the blue rushed through it.

And out at the gap in the ceiling. By the time the flash cleared, the gap had turned into a solid block of ice that had to be several feet thick.

Kanji spoke for the team. "Well. Shit."

"I can burn through it," Yukiko began, "but it's going to take time-"

Her plan was suddenly cut off when the ice exploded, the ship rocking; for a moment, the team wondered if something even worse was springing out of the patching glacier, right up until the dust cleared.

 _"Somehow,"_ Alvin said as the _Inaba_ hovered next to the now wider hole, _"I do not feel like gloating until evacuation is complete. Xekahn!"_

_"Imperative: All aboard!"_

The last the IT saw of the inside of the machines, it was as the refueled ones streamed in to watch as the remote shuttle took off, staring at the leaving prey.

Somehow, none of them felt like taunting the monsters as they watched with those terrible, emotionless eyes that calmly followed the ship with a malicious patience.

The patience of a predator that knew it would meet its prey again.

* * *

"We," Chie began, finally speaking after stilling her adrenaline in the _Inaba's_ infirmary. "Are never. Doing that. Again."

"I wish I could request that of the universe. Just navigating into position for the shot was nerve-wracking enough, and we had a few meters of empty space between me and those... _things."_ Alvin sipped at his tea like a dying man, hands still trembling from adrenaline-powered death grip on the stylus he had used to chart out and caculate the bearing Xekahn had needed to align the kinetic bombards.

"Beleaguered memorandum: I need to make a VI for dual piloting when I'm hacking," the elcor in question said, lying down on his belly, his cloud of omni-tool windows off. "Rueful: I can't drive and browse apps at the same time, no matter how much I can multitask."

Ayane, for her part, had all but attached herself to Minoru at the hip, hugging him close. "Wish I was more help... all I could do was figure out why those things might have been breathing..."

"Don't worry, you were more help than I was," Rise said, gloomily. "Couldn't even figure out what that anomaly was. Assuming it just wasn't _them,_ in power save mode or something..."

"Still, it wasn't a failed mission," Minoru said, getting up. "We got data on what took over the carriers, the URIU know what to expect."

"If they ever show up," Yosuke muttered. "We've been hiding for two hours; ghost ships might be in the relay right now, no matter how slow they are."

Alvin was already frowning, but his frown deepened. "That is the issue. They should have at least radioed us by now; it's not like Alliance to be late without warning."

"Slight joking: Maybe there's two more derelicts, and the number scared them? Serious tone: Point taken. I believe we're far enough away from the carriers' signal detectors to contact the Alliance on our own." A window popped up near Xekahn. 

A window which quickly broke into static as a haggard Hackett came on screen, surrounded by sparking wires.

 _"Inaba?",_ he began, breathing heavily through the broken image. _"Inaba,_ do yo- c-py?"

"Here!" Minoru said, springing up. "Admiral, do you-"

"Th- is a rec-ded mess-ge," the inconstant image of the Admiral says. "Set t- play as s-n as you report- in, as an emer-ency broadc-st."

"Earth is -nder attac-. I repeat, Earth is under attack."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ain't no rest for the weary. Especially when it involves Tower Arcana + Reapers.


End file.
